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AN  INTRODUCTION 
TO  THE  STUDY  OF 
LANDSCAPE  DESIGN 


HENRY  VINCENT  HUBBARD 

ASSISTANT  PROFESSOR  OF  LANDSCAPE  ARCHTTECTURE 
HARVARD  UNIVERSITY 

THEODORA  KIMBALL 

LIBRARIAN.  SCHOOL  OF  LANDSCAPE  ARCHITECTURE 
HARVARD  UNIVERSITY 


THE  MACMttlAN  COMPANY 

1917 

NEW  YORK 


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Copyright,  1917, 

By  the  macmillan  company. 

Set  up  and  electrotyped.      Published  November,  1917. 


NociDODB  ^rcss 

^.  5.  Cusbing  Co,  —  Berivick  &  Smith  Co. 
Nariuood,  Man.,  US. A. 


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TO 

OUR    FELLOW-STUDENTS 

OF   LANDSCAPE    ARCHITECTURE 

AT   HARVARD    UNIVERSITY 


PREFACE 

We  mean  this  book  to  present  a  general  conception  of  landscape 
design  which  may  enable  a  designer  better  to  determine  for  himself 
the  relations  of  the  objects  and  ideas  with  which  he  is  dealing,  and  better 
to  prepare  and  use  in  a  decisive  way,  in  the  individual  problems  of  his 
profession,  the  natural  aptitudes  and  acquired  knowledge  which  are  the 
tools  of  his  trade.  The  book  may  also  serve  as  a  general  introduction 
to  the  subject  for  those  whose  interest  in  it  is  purely  that  of  apprecia- 
tion and  enjoyment  of  landscape  designs  and  of  natural  landscapes. 

The  rapid  growth  of  landscape  architecture  as  an  independent 
profession  has  been  very  recent.  Nearly  all  the  trained  men  in  the 
field  are  giving  their  energies  to  active  practice  rather  than  to  theoriz- 
ing or  to  writing.  It  is  natural,  therefore,  that  the  bulk  of  the  de- 
tailed printed  information  on  construction  and  planting  which  the 
landscape  architect  uses  should  have  originated  in  the  older  fields  of 
architecture  and  engineering  and  horticulture,  that  the  discussions  of 
general  esthetics  should  have  little  specific  reference  to  the  problems 
of  the  landscape  architect,  and  that,  while  there  have  been  many  books 
on  special  problems  and  special  aspects  of  the  field,  there  should  have 
appeared  up  to  this  time  no  book,  treating  generally  of  landscape 
design,  adequate  to  the  modern  development  of  the  subject  and  of  the 
profession. 

This  book  is  not  a  compendium  of  useful  information  as  to  the 
practicalities  of  landscape  construction,  though  such  a  book  is  much 
needed ;  nor  is  it  primarily  a  book  of  pictures  of  completed  work  to 
which  the  designer  may  go  to  see  how  problems  similar  to  his  own 
have  been  met  before.  It  is  emphatically  not  a  book  of  rules  which 
are  supposed  automatically  to  produce  good  design  if  religiously  fol- 
lowed;  there  are  no  such  rules,  and  no  esthetic  theory  is  final.  We 
make  no  attempt  at  any  original  contribution  to  the  subject  of  general 


viii PREFACE 

esthetics ;  we  merely  take  an  esthetic  theory  which  seems  —  to  us  at 
least  —  consistent  and  capable  of  general  application,  and  use  it  as 
the  basis  of  an  organization  of  the  subject  matter  of  the  field  of  land- 
scape design. 

In  the  light  of  this  theory,  we  discuss  the  various  materials  of 
which  landscape  compositions  are  made,  and  then,  to  make  this  discus- 
sion more  definite  and  directly  useful,  we  treat  at  some  length  certain 
examples  of  the  problems  of  the  modern  landscape  designer ;  consider- 
ing briefly  also,  in  the  appendix,  how  the  landscape  architect  may 
handle  some  parts  of  his  professional  practice,  and  giving  a  series  of 
plans  of  actually  constructed  work. 

We  have  chosen  the  illustrations  primarily  to  show  points  in  the 
discussion  which  cannot  so  well  be  expressed  in  words ;  also,  as  far  as 
we  were  able,  consistently  with  their  other  uses,  we  have  tried  to  have 
the  pictures  in  themselves  good  examples  of  composition  in  various 
modes.  We  have  been  content  to  forego,  in  many  instances,  the  use 
of  pictures  of  subjects  already  well  covered  In  other  books,  for  Instance 
gates,  garden  furniture,  steps,  fountains  and  so  on. 

Since  we  intend  this  book  to  be  useful  also  as  a  textbook,  we  have 
made  the  subject-index  unusually  full. 

We  include  a  list  of  references  to  the  more  important  literature 
of  landscape  architecture.  Taken  together  with  the  footnotes,  this 
gives  the  reader  an  opportunity  further  to  pursue  aspects  of  the  sub- 
ject not  treated  at  length  in  this  book,  or  to  find  a  statement  of  them 
in  the  clearest  or  most  authoritative  form. 

We  are  well  aware  that  no  designer  was  ever  made  by  the  study 
of  theory  alone,  and  that  most  of  the  essential  fire  of  emotion  in  appre- 
ciation and  design  is  forever  untransmutable  into  written  words,  but 
there  still  should  be  a  place  for  a  theoretical  conception  of  the  subject, 
even  in  the  minds  of  the  most  inspired  designers,  and  we  are  writing 
this  book  in  the  hope  of  adding  something  to  the  clarity  of  this  concep- 
tion. 

H.  V.  H. 

T.  K. 

Cambridge,  Massachusetts 
June,  1917. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER   I 


PACES 

1-5 


Introduction     ........... 

Definition  of  landscape  architecture,  I  —  Its  province,  i  —  Its  de- 
velopment as  a  separate  profession,  2  —  Its  requirements  of  the  prac- 
titioner, 3 —  His  preparation,  4  —  His  opportunities  and  rewards,  5. 

CHAPTER    II 
iTheory  of  Landscape  Design  ........  6-23 

Landscape  design  defined,  6  —  Esthetic  and  economic  aspects,  6  — 
Psychological  basis  of  esthetic  theory  of  design,  7  —  Sensation,  percep- 
tion, intellection,  7  —  Pleasure,  8  —  Sources  of  pleasure  in  sensation, 
8  —  In  perception  and  imagination,  9  —  In  intellection,  10  —  Experi- 
ence, emotion,  and  association,  12  —  Esthetic  analysis  in  design,  16  — 
Unity,  16  —  Logical,  17  —  Ethical,  17  —  Economic,  18  —  Esthetic, 
19  —  Esthetic  expression  and  impression,  ig  —  Definition  of  beauty,  19 

—  Types,  21 — Ideals,  21 — Taste  and  style,  22  —  Landscape  char- 
acter, 22  —  Landscape  effect,  22. 

CHAPTER    III 
Taste,  Ideals,  Style,  and  Character  in  Landscape  Design    .         .         24-31 

Taste,  individual  and  community,  24  —  Development  of  taste,  25 

—  "  Schools  "  and  tradition,  25  —  Teaching  and  taste,  26  —  Criticism, 
26  —  Self-criticism  in  design,  27  —  Choice  of  ideals,  27  —  Perfection, 
28  —  Imagination  and  genius,  28  —  Style:  Individual  style,  28  — 
Historic  styles,  29  —  Humanized  and  naturalistic  styles,  30  —  Inter- 
pretation of  landscape  character,  31. 

CHAPTER    IV 
Styles  of  Landscape  Design      ........         32-61 

Origin  and  names  of  historic  styles,  32  —  Categories  of  styles,  33 

—  Examples  of  historic  styles  of  landscape  design,  35  —  The  Moorish 
style  in  Spain,  35  —  The  Moghul  style  in  India,  36  —  The  styles  of 


CONTENTS 


the  Italian  Renaissance  and  Baroque  villas,  39  —  The  style  of  Le 
Notre,  42  —  The  Romantic  landscape  style,  45  —  The  English  formal 
style  of  the  Tudors,  47  —  The  English  cottage  style,  49  —  The  New 
England  colonial  style,  50  — The  modern  German  formal  style,  51  — 
The  Japanese  styles,  54  —  The  modern  American  landscape  style,  57 
—  Study  of  styles,  59  —  Choice  of  style,  60. 


CHAPTER    V 
Landscape  Characters      .........         62-75 

The  physical  origin  of  landscape  characters,  62  —  Characters  as 
parallel  to  styles,  63  —  Examples  of  landscape  characters,  64  —  The 
prairie,  64  —  The  barren  or  tundra,  65 — Sand  dunes,  66  —  The  Se- 
quoia grove,  66 — The  Sierra  mountain  meadow,  67  —  The  bushy 
pasture,  68  —  English  pastoral  landscape,  69  —  Design  in  landscape 
characters,  70  —  Landscape  characters  in  relation  to  economic  use  and 
maintenance,  72  —  Value  and  preservation  of  characteristic  scenery, 
74  —  Man's  need  of  free  landscape,  75. 

CHAPTER   VI 
/Landscape  Effects    ..........         76-87 

Taste  in   landscape  effects,  76 — Variety  of  landscape  effects,  77 

—  Literary  discussions  of  landscape  effects,  77  — The  "  beautiful  "  and 
the  "picturesque,"  77  —  Their  fundamental  difference,  77 — Their 
application  in  design,  78  —  Examples  of  other  effects,  79  —  Sublimity, 
79  —  Desolation,  81 — Melancholy,  81 — Gayety,  82  —  Mystery,  82 

—  Effects  from  transitory  conditions,  83  —  Harmony  and  contrast  in 
effects,  83  —  Effects  in  landscape  characters,  84 —  Effects  in  styles,  85 

—  Design  in  effects,  86. 

CHAPTER   VII 
Landscape  Composition      .........       88—129 

Composition  in  landscape  and  in  painting,  88^  Order  in  composi- 
tion, objective  and  subjective,  89  —  Segregation  of  the  composition,  90 

—  Unity  and  attention,  90  —  Attention  and  training,  91 — Emphasis, 
contrast,  climax,  dominance,  91 — Landscape  composition  within  the 
visual  angle,  92  —  Unity  of  larger  landscape  compositions,  92 — The 
forms  of  order  in  composition,  93  —  Repetition,  94 — Harmony, 
monotony,  and  variety,  94  —  Sequence,  94  —  Sequence  of  continua- 
tion or  repetition,  94  —  Rhythm,  95  —  Progression,  96  —  Balance,  96 

—  Symmetrical,  97  —  Occult,  97 — -Intensification  of  emotion  from 


CONTENTS xi 

rASES 

repetition,  sequence,  and  balance,  97  —  Characteristics  of  objects  in 
landscape  composition,  98  —  Shape,  98  —  Individuality  through  shape 
in  landscape  composition,  99  —  Value  of  shapes  and  their  arrangement 
in  composition,  100  —  Size,  scale,  and  distance,  10 1 — Absolute  and 
relative  scale,  101  — Indication  of  scale  in  landscape  composition,  101 

—  Effects  of  perspective,  102  —  Texture,  103  —  Scale  relation  of  tex- 
ture to  size  and  shape,  103  —  Color,  104 — Color  and  light,  105  — 
Hue,  intensity,  and  value  in  color  composition,  106  —  Emotional  effect 
of  colors,  107 — Color  harmony,  107  —  Color  in  landscape  composi- 
tion, no  —  Light  and  shade,  in  —  Light  and  shade  unity  in  landscape 
composition,  11 1 — Variability  of  light  and  shade,  112  —  Atmosphere 
and  atmospheric  perspective,  113  —  As  a  consideration  in  landscape 
composition,  115 — Illusions  in  composition,  116 — Of  material,  118 

—  Of  shape,  119  —  Of  size,  120  —  Of  character,  121 — Associa- 
tional  illusions,  121 — Landscape  compositions,  122  —  Typical  kinds 
of  pictorial  compositions,  123 — The  vista  as  a  typical  example,  124 

—  Pictorial  enframement,  foregrounds,  backgrounds,  and  planes  of  dis- 
tance, 1 26  —  Objects  in  landscape  composition  according  to  their 
design  value,  128 — Temporary  elements,  129. 

CHAPTER    VIII 
Natural  Forms  of  Ground,  Rock,  and  Water  as  Elements  in  Design     130-150 

The  value  in  design  of  a  knowledge  of  natural  forms,  130 — Hills 
and  mountains:  typical  forms,  131 — Hill  and  mountain  forms  in 
landscape  composition,  132- — Modification  of  effect  of  hill  by  treat- 
ment of  local  details,  133  —  Valleys:  typical  forms,  134  —  Choice  of 
viewpoint  for  completeness  of  effect  of  valley,  135  —  Plains:  typical 
forms  and  effects,  136  —  Bodies  of  water  :  their  effects,  136  —  Lakes, 
137  —  Islands,  138  —  Shores  and  beaches,  138 — Streams  and  stream 
banks,  140  —  Waterfalls,  142  —  Rocks  in  naturalistic  design,  143  — 
Bowlders,  144  — Ledges,  145  —  Color  and  texture  of  rocks,  146 — ^Rock 
planting,  147  —  Minor  modeling  of  ground  surface,  147  —  Banks,  148. 

CHAPTER    IX 
Planting  Design 1 51-188 

Plants  as  material  in  landscape  design,  151 — The  time  element 
in  planting  design,  152  —  Relation  of  planting  design  and  maintenance, 
153  —  Plant  characteristics  in  landscape  design,  153  —  Plant  forms,  153 

—  Classes  of  tree  forms  and  their  uses  in  design,  154  —  Form  the  ex- 
pression of  mode  of  growth,  155  — Winter  tree  form,  156  —  Form  in 
topiary  work,  156  —  Plant  texture,  157  —  Plant  color,  159  —  Effect  of 
character  of  leaves  on  foliage  color,  i  59  —  Range  of  foliage  color,  159 


xii CONTENTS 

PAGES 

—  Restricted  use  of  other  colors  than  green,  159  —  Effects  of  foliage 
color,  160  —  Contrast  of  color  in  differentiation  of  units  in  design,  160 

—  Foliage  color  and  aerial  perspective,  161  — Use  of  "colored  foliage," 
161 — Autumn  foliage,  161  — Winter  color,  bark,  and  fruit,  162  — 
Color  of  flower,  162  —  Practical  difficulties  of  design  in  flower  color, 
162  —  Circumstances  harmonizing  flower  colors,  163  —  Mass  relation 
in  flower  color,  163  —  Plant  character,  164  —  Species  and  character, 
164  —  Individual  plant  character,  165  —  Character  and  environment, 
165 — ^  Relation  of  plant  character  and  landscape  character,  165  — 
"  Expression  "  and  character,  166  —  Association  and  symbolism,  166 

—  Plantations,  167 — -Inclosing  plantations,  167  —  Outline,  modeling, 
and  treatment  of  informal  inclosing  plantations,   168  —  Hedges,   170 

—  Low  hedges  and  edgings,  171  — Specimen  trees  and  shrubs,  171  — 
Tree  and  shrub  groups,  173  —  Composition  of  groups,  174  —  Shrub 
beds,  175  —  Herbaceous  beds  and  borders,  176 — Flower  beds  as  parts 
of  a  garden  inclosed,  177  —  Arrangement  of  plants  in  relation  to  form 
of  bed  and  form  of  plants,  177  —  Arrangement  of  plants  in  relation  to 
time  of  bloom,  178  —  Arrangement  of  plants  in  relation  to  color,  179  — ■ 
Grouping  of  plants  according  to  character,  179  —  Planting  as  surface 
decoration,  179  —  Carpet  bedding  and  parterres,  180 — Ground  cover, 
182  —  Turf,  182  —  Planting  in  relation  to  topography,  183  —  Water- 
side planting,  185  —  Planting  in  relation  to  architectural  structures, 
186  —  Planting  as  enframement,  186  —  Planting  as  transition  between 
ground  and  structure,  187  —  Planting  as  decoration  of  structures,  188. 


CHAPTER    X 
I  Design  of  Structures  in  Relation  to  Landscape    ....      189-230 

Buildings  in  relation  to  landscape,  189  —  Buildings  subordinate  to 
natural  character,  189  —  Buildings  dominating  landscape,  190  —  Form 
relations  of  buildings  and  landscape  surroundings,  192  —  Building 
groups,  194  —  Texture  relation^,  194 — Color  relations,  195 — Shel- 
ters and  pavilions,  196 — Terraces,  198 — Parapets,  199  —  Retaining 
walls,  200  —  Terrace  banks,  200  —  Steps,  201 — In  formal  design, 
201 — In  naturalistic  design,  203 — Walls  and  fences,  204  —  Walls: 
materials  and  decoration,  205  —  Fences,  lattices,  and  grilles,  207  — 
Gateways  and  gates,  209  —  Statuary,  210  —  Its  value  among  decora- 
tive objects  in  design,  211 — Its  setting  in  landscape  composition,  212 
—  Architectural  and  sculptural  water  features,  213  —  Grottoes  and 
wall  fountains,  213  —  Cascades,  214  —  Water-ramps,  214  —  Free- 
standing fountains,  215  —  Pools  and  basins,  215  —  Bridges,  216  — 
Their  forms  and  materials,  217  —  Roads  and  paths,  218  —  Roads  in 
naturalistic  landscape,  219  —  Form  of  roads,  220  —  Road  intersections, 
221  —  Views  of  and  from  roads,  222 — Planting  and  roads,  223  — 


CONTENTS xiii 

PAGSS 

Paths^ in _najuxali*uc- design,  224 — Form  of  paths,  224  —  Roads  in 
formal  design,  225  —  Paths  in  formal  design,  226  —  Materials  of  roads 
and  paths,  227. 

CHAPTER    XI 
Types  of  Landscape  Designs     ........     231-323 

Landscape  designs  according  to  typical  uses,  231. 

Part  L  The  Garden,  233-246  —  Definition  and  use  of  the 
word  "garden,"  233  —  Esthetic  characteristics  of  a  garden,  234  — 
Inclosure,  234  —  Plants  in  the  garden,  235  —  Unity  of  effect  of  whole 
garden,  236  —  A  garden  recognizably  a  work  of  design,  236  —  Formal 
and  non-formal  arrangements,  237  —  Ways  of  giving  a  garden  dis- 
tinctiveness, 237  —  Choice  of  stvle,  239  —  Composition  of  the  gar- 
den, 239  —  Its  compositional  elements,  239  —  Inclosure  materials,  240 

—  Retaining  walls  and  banks,  240  —  High  boundaries:  their  compo- 
sition and  decoration,  241  — The  house  as  part  of  the  garden  bound- 
ary, 242  —  Garden  "floor"  materials,  242  —  Typical  compositional 
arrangements  of  the  garden  floor,  243  —  Objects  marking  points  of 
interest  in  the  garden  composition,  244  —  Suitability  of  different  ob- 
jects to  this  purpose,  245. 

Part  II.  The  Estate,  247-274  —  The  estate  as  expressing 
the  owner's  desires,  247  —  Physical  elements  of  the  estate,  249 — The 
house,  250  —  Effect  of  interior  arrangements  on  house  form,  251  — 
House  form  as  affected  by  choice  of  style,  253  —  Location  and  orien- 
tation of  house,  253  —  The  house  terrace,  257  —  The  forecourt,  258 

—  The  garden  as  a  unit  of  the  estate,  259  —  Pleasure  buildings,  261  — 
House  service  areas,  263  —  Estate  service  buildings  and  areas,  263  — 
The  greenhouse,  264  —  Reserve  and  vegetable  gardens,  265  —  Tennis 
courts  and  areas  for  other  recreations,  266  —  The  open  lawn,  267  — 
Tree-shaded  areas,  268 — Natural  character  units,  268 — ^  Access,  269 

—  Approach  roads,  269 — J'aths^  2  7  I — The  design  of  the  whole 
estate,  272  —  Choice  of  site  lor  an  estate,  273 — Apportionment  of 
estate  area  into  the  units  required,  274. 

Part  III.  Land  Subdivision  for  Residential  Purposes,  275— 
294 — Land  subdivision  as  a  business  venture,  275  —  Items  of  ex- 
pense to  the  developer,  275  — Salable  assets  produced  by  development, 
276  —  Room,  276  —  Proximity  to  town,  277 — Convenience,  277 
Social  desirability,  277  —Amenity,  277  —  Beauty,  277  —  "  Low-cost  "  /' 
and  "high-cost"  developments,  278  —  Professional  advice  in  land  sub- 
division, 280  — ■  Procedure  in  design,  280  —  Choice  of  type  of  develop- 
ment in  relation  to  development  of  city,  280 — The  street  system  :  its 
relation  to  the  city  plan,  282  —  Alleys,  282  —  Characteristic  effects 
of  street  systems,  283  —  Streets  in  relation  to  topography,  283 — Sub- 
surface utilities,  284  —  Street  widths,  284  —  Roadways  and  planting 


7- J' 


xiv CONTENTS 

FACES 

Strips,  285^ — Sidewalks,  285 — Lots:  sizes,  286  —  Width  and  depth, 
286  —  Shape,  287  ^Orientation,  288  —  Reserved  areas,  289  —  Re- 
strictions, 291  — Districting,  293. 

Part  IV.  Landscape  Parks  and  Reservations,  295-323  — 
Man's  need  of  recreation,  295  —  Classification  of  outdoor  recreation 
areas,  296- — Their  relation  to  the  city  plan:  park  systems,  297  — 
The  large  landscape  park,  298  —  Site  and  available  landscape  char- 
acter units,  299  —  Extent  and  seclusion,  300  —  Park  use  and  landscape 
units,  301  — Landscape  characters  best  fitted  to  park  use,  301  — Pas- 
toral landscape,  301 — Wooded  landscape,  302  —  Rocks  and  ledges, 
303  —  Brooks  and  ponds,  303  —  Uses  properly  served  by  a  landscape 
park,  305 — Access  and  entrances,  308  —  Circulation,  309  —  Roads, 
309  —  Bridle  pajhs,  311 — Footbaths,  311 — Inter-relation  of  roads 
and  patSs,  313  —  Buildings  properly  serving  park  uses,  314  —  Build- 
ings in -relation  to  the  park  landscape,  316  —  Minor  structures:  park 
furniture,  316  —  Park  boundaries  and  gates,  318  —  Landscape  reser- 
vations: Municipal  and  Metropolitan,  318  —  Combination  with  other 
uses,  320  —  State  and  National  parks  and  reservations,  321  — National 
planning,  323. 


APPENDIX 

PART  I 

Notes  on  the  Professional  Practice  of  Landscape  Architecture  in 

America      ...........     325-337 

Professional  conduct,  325  —  Professional  charges,  326^ — Profes- 
sional reputation,  328  —  Advertising  and  publicity,  329 —  Professional 
announcements,  331  —  Public  exhibitions,  331 — Competitions,  332 
— ^  Landscape  architect,  client,  and  contractor,  332  —  Cooperation  of 
landscape  architect  with  other  practitioners,  333  —  Cooperation  in  city 
planning,  334^ — ^Organization  and  equipment  of  a  landscape  architect's 
office,  334 — -Clerical  force,  334- — Technical  office  and  field  force, 
335  — Office  reference  material,  336. 

PART    II 
Notes  on  Procedure  in  Design  .......     338-353 

The  client,  338  —  Topographic  data,  339  —  Design,  340 — Rep- 
resentation  of  design,  342  —  Models,  342  —  Pictures  and  plans,  343 

—  Written  statements,  343 —  Verbal  directions  and  explanations,  345 

—  Series  of  drawings  for  a  landscape  job,  345  —  An  example  of  repre- 
sentation of  design  :   presentation  of  landscape  plans,  346  —  Superin- 


3t 


CONTENTS  XV 


tendence:  of  construction,  351 — Of  maintenance,  353  —  Note  on 
drawings  to  accompany  Appendix,  Part  II,  355  —  List  of  plants  to 
accompany  planting  plan,  357. 

SELECTED    LIST   OF 
REFERENCES   ON   LANDSCAPE   ARCHITECTURE      361-381 

Bibliography,  361 — Periodicals,  362  —  General,  362  —  History 
and  historic  styles,  364  —  Theor)'  of  landscape  design  and  apprecia- 
tion, 366  —  Landscape  composition,  368  —  Natural  forms  of  ground, 
rock,  and  water,  369  —  Vegetation:  Planting  design,  369  —  Struc- 
tures in  relation  to  landscape,  372  —  Types  of  landscape  designs,  373 
—  Professional  practice,  381  —  Construction  and  maintenance,  381. 

INDEX 383-406 


LIST    OF    ILLUSTRATIONS 


DRAWINGS 

I.  Cypress  Alley,  Villa  Gamberaia 

II.  Gravetye  Manor     ..... 

III.  Garden  Pool,  The  Generaliffe  . 

IV.  Terrace  Steps,  Villa  Garzoni  (Collodi) 
V.  Fountain  on  Main  Terrace,  Versailles 

VI.      Steps  to  the  Terrace,  St.  Catherine's  Court, 

Somerset  ..... 

VII.      Cottage  on  the  Thames    .... 

VIII.      Garten  am  Miiggelsee       .... 

IX.      The  Chateau  from  the  end  of  the  Long  Canal, 

Versailles         ..... 

X.      Grand  Trianon,  Versailles 

XI.      The  Music  Pavilion,  Petit  Trianon,  Versailles 

XII.      The  Hameau,  Petit  Trianon,  Versailles 

XIII.  Gateway  to  Orange  Garden,    V^illa  Palmieri 

XIV.  The  Inner  Court,  Villa  Falconieri 
XV.      St.  Peter's,  Rome,  from  outside  the  City     . 

XVI.      Diagram  :     Relation    of    Enframement    and 
Vista  Point      ..... 
XVII.      Diagram  :   Shores  subject  to  Wave-action 
XVIII.      Plan  :   Wild  Garden,  Newport,  R.  I. 
XIX.      Diagram  :  Typical  Sections  in  Informal  Road 
Grading  ..... 

XX.      A  Corner  of  the  Garden,  Bradfield,  Devon 
XXI.      Diagram  :   Two  Different  Types  of  Herba- 
ceous Planting  .... 
XXII.      Diagram  :   Relation  of  Plant  Form  to  Ground 
Form      .... 

XXIII.  Abandoned  Farmhouse 

XXIV.  English  Hillside  Farm  Buildings 
XXV.      The  Temple  of  Love,  Versailles 

XXVI.     Thatched  Shelter    . 

XXVII.      Diagram  :   Some  Typical  Forms  of  Steps 
XXVIII.      Diagram  :   Typical  Plans  of  Curving   Roads 

xvii 


yi.  B.  LeBoutillier 
Hubert  G.  Ripley 
Benjamin  T.  Morrison 
Henry  P.   While 
Hubert  G.  Ripley 


Henry  P.   White 
A.  B.  LeBoutillier 
Redrawn  by  Henry  P 

Henry  P.  White 
Henry  P.  White 
Henry  P.  White 
Henry  P.  White 
Henry  P.  White 
Hubert  G.  Ripley 
Henry  P.  White 

H.  V.  Hubbard 
H.  V.  Hubbard 
H.   y.  Hubbard 

H.  F.  Hubbard 
Henry  P.   White 

H.   V.  Hubbard 

H.   r.  Hubbard 
Hubert  G.  Ripley 
Hubert  G.  Ripley 
A.  B.  LeBoutillier 
Henry  P.  White 
H.  y.  Hubbard 
H.  r.  Hubbard 


opposite 


White 


opposite 


opposite 


opposite 


26 

30 
36 
40 
44 

48 
50 
54 

78 

80 

82 

84 

100 

1 1 2 

122 

126 

'39 
146 

■49 
158 

176 

184 
190 
192 
196 
198 
202 
221 


XVlll 


LIST   OF  ILLUSTRATIONS 


XXIX.      Diagram  :    Some   Relations  of  House  and 

Surroundings  .... 

XXX.      Plan  :     Formal     Relation    of    House    and 

Surroundings  .... 

XXXI.      Plan  :    Relation  of  House  to  Views  on  all 

Four  Sides   ..... 

XXXII.      Plan  :   Relation  of  House  and  Surroundings 

to  Irregular  Site     .... 

XXXIII.  Plan  :  Land  Subdivision  Scheme  for  a  Hill- 

side Tract    ..... 

XXXIV.  Plan  :    Development   of  Several    Lots    on 

Hillside  Tract        .... 
XXXV.      Plan  :   Franklin  Park,  Boston 

XXXVI.  Topographical  Map,  Estate  near  Boston    . 

XXXVII.  Preliminary  Plan,  Estate  near  Boston 

XXXVIII.  Grading  Plan,  Estate  near  Boston 

XXXIX.  Profiles,  Estate  near  Boston     . 

XL.  Planting  Plan,  Estate  near  Boston     . 


H.  V.  Hubbard 

H.  V.  Hubbard  . 

H.  y.  Hubbard  . 

H.  V.  Hubbard  . 

H.  F.  Hubbard  . 

Elbert  Peets    . 
Courtesy  of  Boston  Park 

Department 
F.  A.   Castle 
Henry  P.   White       . 
H.  F.  Hubbard 
F.  A.  Castle  . 
H.   F.  Hubbard        . 


opposite     254 

"     260 

268 

274 

"     280 

"     288 

298 
356 
following  356 
356 
356 
356 


TAILPIECES 

Gate  of  Lower  Garden,  Villa  Lante  .  Henry  P.  White 

Garden  Theater,  Villa  Gori   .  .  .  H.  V.  Hubbard 

Gateway  to  Terrace,  Packwood  House     .  Henry  P.  White 

Wall  Fountain,  Nervi    ....  Henry  P.   White 

Well-curb,  S.  Stefano,  Bologna        .  .  Henry  P.  White 

In  a  Modern  New  England  Garden  .  Henry  P.  White 


*3 
61 

87 
230 
294 

337 


LIST     OF     ILLUSTRATIONS     (Continued) 


PHOTOGRAPHS 


In  the  High  Sierras,  California 

The  Taj  Mahal  .... 

Rousseau's  Tomb,  The  Isle  of  Poplars,  Ermenonville 
A  Bridge,  Ermenonville 
The  Temple  Garden  of  Sambo-in,   at  Daigo, 

Kioto        ..... 
The  Nichols  Garden,  Salem 
Naturalistic  Lawn,  Estate  near  Boston    . 
Sequoia  Grove  .... 

A  Sierra  Mountain  Meadow 
An  Upland  Pasture    .... 
The  Park,  Thoresby  House,  Wilts 
Desolation  :   A  Study  in  Landscape  EiFect 
A  Small  Fall  on  the  Merced  River,  Yosemite 
Vernal  Fall,  Yosemite 
Nevada  Fall,  Yosemite 
The  Meadow  Road,  Arnold  Arboretum 
After  a  Frost  Storm,  Mt.  Osceola,  N.  H. 
Snow  :   A  Study  in  Composition  in  Line 
Snow-laden  Pines  :  A  Study  in  Texture 
Light  and  Shadow,  Villa  Lante 
Monhegan  Spruces  :   A  Study  in  Atmosphere 
Long  View  over  Meadow  in  the  Park,  Muskau 
New  Hampshire  Intervale    . 
View  from  Tchipite  Dome,  California    . 
A  Brook  in  the  Sierras,  California 
The  "Oxbow,"  Bear  Camp  River,  N.  H. 
Waterside  Planting,  Sion  House,  Brentford 
The  Spring  in  the   Wild   Garden,   Estate  at  New- 
port, R.  I. 
Bridge,  Stourton,  Wilts 
The  Lower  Garden,  Villa  Lante 
Ihe  Garden  of  "Weld,"  Brookline,  Mass. 


H.  r.  Hubbard  . 

.    Frontispiece 

Roland  B.  Dixon 

PLAT« 

I 

H.  y.  Hubbard    . 

2 

H.  V.  Hubbard  . 

3 

Guy  H.  Lee 

Mary  H.  Northend 
N.  L.  Stebbins     . 

♦ 
5 
6 

H.  r.  Hubbard   . 

7 

H.  F.  Hubbard  . 

8 

Bertrand  H.   Wentworth 

9 

From  Collection  of  Olmsted  Brotheri 

r         lo 

H.  r.  Hubbard   . 

1 1 

H.  V.  Hubbard   . 

12 

H.  r.  Hubbard    . 

>3 

H.   r.  Hubbard  . 

•4 

George  R.  King  . 
H.   l\  Hubbard   . 

'5 
i6 

Bertrand  H.   Wentworth 

I? 

Bertrand  H.   Wentworth 

i8 

H.  /'.  Hubbard   . 

'9 

Bertrand  H,   Wentworth 

20 

H.   r.  Hubbard  . 

21 

Thomas  W.  Sears 

22 

H.   r.  Hubbard  . 

23 

H.  r.  Hubbard  . 

24 

William  Homes    . 

25 

From  Collection  of  Olmsted  Brothen 

26 

H.  V.  Hubbard   . 

z7 

From  Collection  of  Olmsted  Brothen 

28 

H.  V.  Hubbard  ....        29 
Courtesy  of  Charles  A.  Piatt  .        30 


XX 


LIST   OF   ILLUSTRATIONS 


The  Circuit  Drive,  Franklin  Park,  Boston 
Scarborough  Pond  Bridge,  Franklin  Park 
The  Tennis  Courts,  Ellicottdale,  Franklin  Park 
Steps  in  Naturalistic  Setting,  Franklin  Park 
Overlook  Shelter,  Franklin  Park    . 
The  Town  of  Baltit,  Hunza  :   A  Study  of  Adaptation 
of  Structures  to  Topography 


Courtesy  of  Boston  Park  Department  3 1 
Courtesy  of  Boston  Park  Department  32 
Courtesy  of  Boston  Park  Department  3  3 
George  R.  King  .  .  .  .34. 

George  R.  King  .  .  .  -35 

Roland  B.  Dixon  ,  ,         .36 


AN  INTRODUCTION 
TO  THE  STUDY  OF 
LANDSCAPE   DESIGN 


CHAPTER  I 
INTRODUCTION 

Definition  of  Landscape  Architecture  —  Its  province  —  Its  development  as 
A  separate  profession  —  Its  requirements  of  the  practitioner  —  His 
preparation  —  His  opportunities  and  rewards. 

"Landscape  architecture  is  primarily  a  fine  art,  and  as  such  its  most  Definition  of 
important  function  is  to  create  and  preserve  beauty  in  the  surroundings  of  Landscape 
human  habitations  and  in  the  broader  natural  scenery  of  the  country ;  but  it 
is  also  concerned  with  promoting  the  comfort,  convenience,  and  health  of 
urban  populations,  which  have  scanty  access  to  rural  scenery,  and  urgently 
need  to  have  their  hurrying,  workaday  lives  refreshed  and  calmed  by  the 
beautiful  and  reposeful  sights  and  sounds  which  nature,  aided  by  the  land- 
scape art,  can  abundantly  provide."  * 

Man  obtains  from  his  environment  tw^o  things  which  he  desires,  The  Province 
usefulness  and  beauty,  and  all  material  progress  in  civilization  has  °^^^^i"ffil^/^ 
consisted  in  his  modification  of  his  surroundings  to  serve  these  two 
needs.  Very  early  in  his  history  he  shaped  the  economic  changes 
which  he  made  in  the  earth's  surface  so  that  they  gave  him  also  an 
esthetic  satisfaction.  This  satisfaction  was  due  in  great  measure  to 
the  fact  that  the  changes  were  obviously  man-made ;  they  bore  wit- 
ness that  he  had  impressed  his  ideas  on  the  stubborn  natural  material. 
Much  later  in  his  development  —  almost,  it  might  be  said,  in  modern 
times  —  came  the  period  when  man,  instead  of  being  isolated  and 
overpowered  in  the  midst  of  wild  nature,  found  himself  cramped  and 
oppressed  by  the  works  of  his  own  hands,  and  sought  relief  in  the  esthetic 
pleasure  to  be  derived  from  landscape  which  expresses  not  man's  will 
but  the  operation  of  natural  forces. 

*  From  letter  of  President-Emeritus  Charles  W.  Eliot  to  the  Editors  of  Land- 
scape Architecture,  October,  1910,  vol.  i,  no.  i,  p.  40. 

B  I 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Development  of 
Landscape 
Architecture  as 
a  Separate 
Profession 


The  province  of  landscape  architecture  is  to  guide  man's  modifica- 
tion of  the  landscape  so  that  he  may  get  the  greatest  possible  esthetic 
satisfaction  of  one  or  both  of  these  two  quite  different  kinds.  The 
resulting  beauty  might  be,  at  one  end  of  the  scale,  that  of  the  formal 
surroundings  of  a  palace  —  architecture  in  natural  materials  to  show 
man's  magnificence  —  or,  at  the  other  extreme,  that  of  a  woodland 
solitude  —  apparently  an  age-long  natural  growth  —  a  place  of  rest 
from  all  the  works  of  man. 

In  this  new  province,  there  must  be  a  new  type  of  designer.  In 
producing  the  formal  setting  of  a  palace,  the  landscape  architect's 
equipment  may  indeed  difi"er  from  that  of  the  architect  only  in  his 
knowledge  of  plants  and  what  effects  can  be  secured  with  them;  in 
reproducing  or  in  intelligently  preserving  a  natural  woodland,  however, 
the  landscape  architect  must  have  a  knowledge  of  nature's  processes, 
a  familiarity  with  nature's  materials,  a  sensitiveness  to  the  natural 
beauty  of  rock  and  wood  and  water,  which  does  not  form  the  pro- 
fessional equipment  of  any  other  artist. 

When  a  new  profession  has  come  to  be  recognized,  or  when  an  old 
profession  has  been  separated  into  several  branches,  the  fundamental 
cause  for  this  subdivision  of  field  has  always  been  the  same  :  the  dis- 
covery of  so  many  new  facts,  or  the  increase  in  importance  of  so  many 
known  facts,  that  one  man  cannot  master  them  all.  With  the  handling 
of  a  newly  segregated  field  of  fact  will  come  the  acquisition  of  a  new 
technique,  the  elaboration  of  theory  in  some  new  direction,  even  the 
growth  of  a  new  technical  language,  which  also  take  time  to  master. 

This  is  what  has  happened  in  the  case  of  landscape  architecture. 
Within  comparatively  recent  years,  there  has  come  a  general  recog- 
nition of  the  value  to  the  public  of  designed  and  organized  cities,  and 
of  parks,  reservations,  and  other  out-of-door  spaces,  and  a  greatly  in- 
creased interest  in  private  pleasure-grounds  of  various  kinds.  There 
is  now  an  efltective  demand  for  designing  skill  using  as  materials  ground 
forms  and  vegetation,  and  for  designing  skill  in  the  arrangement  of 
landscape  and  architectural  forms  —  streets,  parks,  buildings,  —  in 
larger  unities,  for  public  use. 

This  demand  has  been  met  by  the  rise  of  a  separate  profession, 
because  the  materials  and  technique  of  this  new  field  are  not  those 


INTRODUCTION 


of  the  older  allied  professions  of  architecture  and  engineering,  and 
are  quite  as  difficult  to  master  within  an  ordinary  lifetime.  And  in 
no  field  is  it  possible  to  design  effectively  "on  general  principles"  with- 
out a  detailed  personal  knowledge  of  the  materials  and  technique. 

Like  Architecture,  its  sister  profession  in  the  Fine  Arts,  Landscape  Requirements 
Architecture  requires  of  its  practitioner  diverse  abilities  not  often  %'J^^^^q^ 
found  in  the  same  person :  the  esthetic  appreciation  and  creative 
power  of  the  artist,  together  with  the  executive  skill  of  the  business 
man.  The  landscape  architect  should  know  the  materials  of  his  art : 
ground  forms,  vegetation,  and  structures  in  their  relation  to  land- 
scape. He  should  know  on  the  one  hand  what  results  are  physically 
possible  of  accomplishment  with  these  materials,  and  on  the  other 
hand  what  kinds  of  beauty  these  materials  can  best  produce,  and  what 
kinds  of  beauty  were  better  attained  in  the  materials  of  some  other  art. 
Since,  for  the  most  part,  the  landscape  architect  cannot  produce  at 
will  in  his  design  all  the  forms  which  he  might  desire,  but  must  choose 
from  among  the  forms  offered  by  nature  those  which  will  suit  his  pur- 
pose, he  cannot  be  confident  that  his  design  is  possible  of  execution 
unless  he  possesses  an  accurate  first-hand  knowledge  of  the  plant  ma- 
terials and  of  the  ground  forms  from  which  he  must  choose  the  ele- 
ments of  his  composition.  Since  the  beauty  of  vegetation  is  that  of 
intricacy,  of  multiplicity,  of  growth  and  change,  the  landscape  archi- 
tect's experience  and  power  in  design  will  come  to  be  quite  different 
from  that  of  the  architect,  who  deals  with  definite,  rigid  forms  and 
balanced  masses.  Since  the  fundamental  organization  of  his  natural- 
istic designs,  of  his  preservation  and  enhancement  of  natural  scenery, 
will  be  the  real  or  apparent  manifestation  of  the  untrammeled  forces 
of  nature,  the  landscape  architect  must  have  humbly  studied  the  forces 
which  carv'e  the  valleys,  and  which  direct  the  flow  of  the  streams,  and 
he  must  be  keenly  sensitive  to  the  esthetic  unity  of  a  mountain  or  the 
perfect  growth  of  a  ground-covering  fern,  which  may  dominate  or 
decorate  his  nature-inspired  work. 

The  landscape  architect  cannot  carry  out  his  designs  with  his  own 
hand ;  so  he  must  use  some  means  of  conveying  his  ideas  to  those 
who  are  to  execute  the  work.  As  this  work  usually  extends  over  a 
considerable  period  of  time,  it  is  necessary  that  the  landscape  archi- 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Preparation 
for  the 
Profession 


tect's  design  be  recorded  in  some  fairly  permanent  form.  He  should 
therefore  acquire  not  only  facility  in  oral  statement,  but  also  ability  in 
the  expression  of  his  ideas  by  drawings,  in  plan,  elevation,  and  perspec- 
tive, and  in  written  reports  to  his  clients,  and  detailed  specifications 
for  the  execution  of  the  work. 

To  carry  his  design  into  actual  construction,  the  landscape  architect 
must  deal  with  men  as  a  business  man.  He  must  be  able  to  impress  the 
desirability  of  his  designs  on  his  clients,  to  organize  his  own  office  and 
field  assistants,  and  to  handle  the  contractors  with  whom  he  deals. 
This  ability  must  be  plainly  more  the  result  of  innate  force  and  prac- 
tical experience  than  of  any  theoretical  instruction. 

Any  one  who  endeavors  to  make  himself  an  efficient  landscape  archi- 
tect will  have  to  acquire  creative  power  in  two  ways  :  he  must  accumu- 
late a  store  of  facts  and  he  must  develop  an  ability  to  organize  this 
experience,  to  analyze  his  individual  problems,  and  to  attack  the  solu- 
tions of  these  problems  in  such  a  logical  way  that  at  the  end  he  may 
be  convinced  that  he  has  arrived  at  the  best  solution  possible  for  him 
under  the  given  conditions.  While  practical  experience  will  provide 
a  man  with  a  store  of  facts,  only  long  practical  experience  can  tell  him 
what  facts  are  most  significant  and  how  they  may  be  best  related. 
Here  lies  the  greatest  value  of  systematic  instruction  in  a  school.  A 
man  may  thus  learn,  from  the  experience  of  others,  a  system  of  or- 
ganization which  may  greatly  help  him  in  evaluating  and  interpreting 
his  own  experience,  and  he  may  learn  at  the  same  time  a  method  of 
approaching  his  problems  which  will  save  him  from  a  considerable 
number  of  the  wasteful  mistakes  inevitably  made  by  any  undirected 
beginner.  Doubtless  when  he  is  finally  settled  in  his  professional  life 
his  methods  will  be  his  own,  but  good  schooling  should  save  him  years 
of  experiment  and  should  give  him  a  broader  outlook  on  his  work  than 
he  would  be  at  all  likely  ever  to  acquire,  without  schooling,  in  the 
pressure  of  professional  activity.  But  instruction  in  a  school  alone 
will  not  fit  a  man  for  independent  practice.  It  is  almost  always  desirable 
that  he  should  serve  an  apprenticeship  under  some  established  practi- 
tioner, so  that  his  ideas  may  be  first  put  to  the  test  of  actuality  under 
the  guidance  of  practical  experience. 

Throughout  his  life  the  landscape  architect  must  be  a  student  of 


INTRODUCTION 


natural  compositions,  and  of  the  work  of  his  fellow  artists,  in  his  own 
field  and  also  in  architecture,  painting,  and  the  kindred  arts.  It  is 
plainly  important  that  his  observations  should  cover  as  great  a  range 
of  character  and  effect  as  possible  —  different  countries,  different  periods, 
and  widely  varying  types  of  natural  scenery  —  for  these  observations  are 
the  raw  materials  from  which  all  his  designs  must  be  made.  But 
here  again,  the  value  of  his  observations  in  his  future  designs  will  de- 
pend almost  wholly  on  the  keenness  of  his  analysis,  and  on  the  certainty 
with  which  he  determines  in  each  case  the  source  from  which  his  pleas- 
ure in  the  composition  is  derived. 

A  landscape  architect  adopts  his  profession  for  two  reasons  :  he  Opportunitiei 
wants  to  earn  a  living,  and,  properly  more  important,  he  expects  to  °^^ 
enjoy  doing  his  work.  Now  part  of  this  enjoyment  will  be  in  a  way 
incidental :  he  will  enjoy  the  outdoor  life,  the  familiarity  with  plants 
and  other  outdoor  objects,  the  intercourse  with  many  different  people; 
if  he  has  executive  ability,  he  will  enjoy  getting  things  organized  and 
accomplished,  but  if  he  is,  as  he  should  be,  an  artist,  he  will  most  enjoy 
producing  original  and  beautiful  things  —  expressing  himself  by  means 
of  arrangements  of  forms  and  colors  in  outdoor  objects  as  the  painter 
does  with  oils  and  canvas,  as  the  sculptor  does  with  marble,  as  the  writer 
does  with  language. 

Another  of  the  rewards  of  the  landscape  architect  is  his  knowledge 
of  the  pleasure  and  well-being  which  his  work  may  bring  to  others.* 
The  designer  of  a  private  place,  large  or  small,  may  take  real  satis- 
faction in  the  outdoor  relaxation  and  pleasure  which  he  has  made 
possible  for  his  client.  The  designer  of  a  park  may  feel  well  repaid 
by  the  knowledge  that  thousands  of  people  are  offered  a  means  of  in- 
nocent recreation  and  a  source  of  refreshment  from  the  insistency  of 
the  crowded  town.  The  man  who  contributes  his  skill  to  the  design 
of  a  new  city  may  properly  feel  that  he  has  acquitted  himself  well  in 
the  world,  if  through  his  efforts  the  life  of  many  future  generations  of 
his  kind  is  made  more  healthful,  more  efficient,  and  more  enjoyable. 

*  Cf.  the  remarks  on  the  opportunities  and  rewards  of  the  profession  made  before 
the  American  Society  of  Landscape  Architects,  by  President  Emeritus  Charles  \V. 
Eliot,  published  in  Landscape  Architecture,  Apr.  191 1,  v.  i,  pp.  145-153,  and  entitled 
Welfare  and  Happiness  in  Works  of  Landscape  Architecture. 


CHAPTER   II 


Landscape 

Design 

Defined 


Esthetic  and 

Economic 

Aspects 


THEORY  OF   LANDSCAPE   DESIGN 

Landscape  design  defined  —  Esthetic  and  economic  aspects  —  Psychological 
BASIS  OF  esthetic  THEORY  OF  DESIGN  —  Sensation,  perception,  intellection  — 
Pleasure  —  Sources  of  pleasure  in  sensation  —  In  perception  and  imagination  — 
In  intellection  —  Experience,  emotion,  and  association  —  Esthetic  analysis  in 
design  —  Unity  —  Logical  —  Ethical  —  Economic  —  Esthetic  —  Esthetic  expres- 
sion and  impression  — Definition  of  beauty  —  Types  —  Ideals  —  Taste  and 
STYLE  —  Landscape  character  —  Landscape  effect. 

The  word  "design"  is  commonly  used  in  two  different  ways.  We 
say  "design  and  construction"  when  we  mean  to  differentiate  the  de- 
cision as  to  what  is  to  be  done,  and  the  record  of  this  decision,  from 
the  actual  doing  of  the  work.  We  say  "good  practically  but  bad  in 
design"  when  we  mean,  for  instance,  that  a  building  serves  its  pur- 
pose as  shelter,  but  does  not  serve  its  purpose  of  giving  visual  pleasure. 
This  use  of  design  as  meaning  only  esthetic  design  is  confusing,  for,  as 
we  shall  see  later,  no  sharp  line  can  be  drawn  in  most  actual  work  be- 
tween esthetic  and  economic  design.  In  this  book  the  word  "design" 
will  be  used  as  meaning  the  art  or  act  of  determining  the  character  of 
an  object  so  that  it  shall  serve  any  predetermined  purpose  or  purposes, 
and  the  term  "  landscape  design  "  will  be  used  simply  as  meaning  design 
in  landscape  materials. 

As  landscape  architecture  is  a  fine  art,  all  of  its  works  must  be 
designed  to  some  extent  to  be  pleasing  in  appearance ;  but  the  great 
majority  of  such  works  are  intended  to  serve  also  some  other  purpose 
of  the  user.  Landscape  design  has,  almost  always,  an  economic  as 
well  as  an  esthetic  aspect.  The  economic  considerations  affecting  the 
design  of  landscape  are  best  set  forth  by  discussing  the  important  types 
of  designed  areas  organized  according  to  use,  such  as  the  garden,  the 
private  estate,  the  park.  These  we  take  up  later  in  Chapter  XL  The 
general  esthetic  principles  underlying  landscape  design  we  will  dis- 

6 


THEORT    OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


cuss  now,  however,  as  far  as  is  necessary  for  our  purpose.  These 
principles  are  fundamentally  the  same  as  those  of  design  in  all  the  fine 
arts,  but  they  differ  in  application  just  as  landscape  architecture  dif- 
fers from  the  other  fine  arts,  in  that  they  are  applied  to  the  particular 
materials  or  elements  of  design  with  which  landscape  architecture  deals  : 
namely,  ground  forms,  vegetation,  and  structures  in  their  relation  to 
landscape. 

In  esthetic  design,  the  fundamental  thing  which  the  artist  is  trying  Psychological 
to  produce  is  an  effect  of  pleasure  in  the  mind  of  the  beholder.     All  his  £j/^"^,^/ 
modifications  of  the  form,  color,  and  texture  of  his  work  are  only  means    Theory  of 
to  the  end  of  this  mental  effect.     Plainly,  then,  the  principles  of  such  Design 
design  must  be  the  principles  of  the  production  of  effects  on  the  mind  by 
external  objects ;    in  other  words  the  principles  are  certain  principles 
of  human  psychology.     From  a  consideration  of  these  principles,  there- 
fore, we  should  be  able  to  see  more  clearly  by  what  mental  processes 
pleasure  arises  from  external  objects,  and  what  characteristics  of  the 
objects  cause  the  pleasure.     We  should  thus  be  able  to  go  more  directly 
to  work  to  bring  about  pleasure  by  proper  use  and  modification  of  the 
characteristics  of  the  objects  in  our  designs. 

In  landscape  architecture  we  are  concerned  almost  exclusively  with 
those  effects  which  are  made  on  the  mind  through  our  sense  of  sight,  and 
indirectly  through  its  cooperating  sense,  touch,  including  feelings  of 
muscular  activity,  which  does  so  much  to  interpret  our  visual  impres- 
sions. The  sensations  received  through  taste,  smell,  and  hearing, 
though  also  to  be  considered,  are  not  often  so  important  in  landscape 
design. 

Our  senses,  acted  upon  by  the  world  about  us,  give  us  various  sen-  Sensation, 
sations.     From  these  sensations  we  come  to  be  able,  by  experience  and  ^^^'^^^"°"' 
habit,  to  perceive  the  existence  of  objects  in  the  world,  and  to  attribute  Intellection 
to  them  the  characteristics  which  our  senses  discover  to  us ;    and  also, 
building  from  our  memories  of  real  objects,  we  may  imagine  objects 
which  have  their  characteristics  related  differently  from  any  which  we 
have  actually  known.     We  may  then  proceed  to  think  about    these 
objects,  real  or  imagined,  and  about  their  relations  in  the  world,  and 
to  come  to  conclusions  as  to  their  usefulness,  or  whatever  else  about  them 
we  wish  to  consider.     These  three  processes,  by  which  we  gain  all  our 


8 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Pleasure 


Pleasure  in 
Sensation  ■ 


knowledge  of  the  material  world,  are  called  by  psychologists  sensation, 
perception,  and  intellection,  and  the  results  of  these  processes  are  called 
respectively  sensations,  percepts,  and  concepts. 

It  should  be  remembered  that  although  these  various  processes  of 
the  mind  can  be  talked  of  separately  they  may  go  on  together.  A  man 
makes  no  conscious  distinction  among  them,  and  indeed  even  in  the 
case  of  perception  he  is  usually  quite  unconscious  of  the  process  until 
his  attention  is  arrested  by  the  thing  perceived. 

All  mental  processes  are  accompanied  by  emotion,  whether  vivid 
or  pale,  and  when  we  say  "pleasure,"  we  mean  only  any  of  the  many 
different  forms  of  emotion  which  are  pleasurable;    that  is,  pleasure  is 
a  name  for  a  certain  character  of  emotions.     The  three  mental  processes 
which  we  have  just  mentioned  may  each  be  accompanied  by  pleasure 
which  we  may  conveniently  call  :   sensory  pleasure,  perceptive  pleasure 
(including  pleasure  of  imagination),  and  intellective  pleasure  ;  and  which, 
like  the  three  processes,   are  usually  not   consciously   distinguished. 
For  instance,  a  man  stands  upon  a  terrace  overlooking  a  garden.     He 
feels  the  sunshine,  he  smells  the  flowers,  his  eyes  receive  the  stimulus 
of  bright  color,  and  he  gets  from  all  this  a  pleasure  of  sensation,  which 
is  simple,  direct,  and  hardly  capable  of  further  analysis.     At  the  same 
time,  however,  he  perceives  the  symmetrical  arrangement  of  the  beds, 
the  orderly  progression  of  the  heights  of  the  flowers,  and  he  gets  from 
this  a  perceptive  pleasure.     He  may  also  be  stimulated  to  imagine  quite 
another  garden,  of  different  design,  for  a  different  situation  which  he 
has  in  mind,  and  from  this  unreal  image  he  may  derive  a  pleasure  of 
imagination  as  vivid  as  that  given  by  the  real  garden  before  him.     Fur- 
ther he  understands  the  permanence  and  economy  of  the  construction, 
he  believes  that  a  difficult  problem  has  been  well  solved,  in  the  real 
garden  or  in  that  of  his  imagination,  and  he  receives  from  this  knowl- 
edge intellective  pleasure. 

If  we  analyze  the  sources  of  pleasure  of  sensation,  we  find  that  a 
sensation  will  have  a  pleasant  quality  according  to  the  duration,  in- 
tensity, and  character  of  the  stimulus.  A  sensation  may  be  pleasurable 
at  first  and  then  through  its  duration  become  painful  or  annoying, 
as,  for  instance,  too  long  hearing  of  a  continued  musical  note,  too  long 
gazing  at  a  brilliant  object ;  or  by  continuance  and  repetition  a  sensation 


THEORT    OF    LANDSCAPE     DESIGN 


may  become  unnoticed,  as  does  the  sound  of  falling  water.  Then  again, 
whatever  its  character  in  moderate  intensity,  it  may  become  painful  in 
increased  intensity;  warmth  may  be  pleasant  but  heat  unpleasant,  a 
chime  of  bells  heard  from  a  distance  may  be  enjoyable,  but  they  would 
hardly  be  so  to  a  hearer  in  the  belfry.  Pleasure  due  to  the  character  of 
the  sensation  arises,  in  some  cases  at  least,  from  order  among  the  stimuli 
which  cause  the  sensation;  for  instance,  a  clear  note,  a  harmonious 
chord,  a  pure  color;  but  in  some  cases  we  can  only  say,  as  yet,  that 
common  experience  teaches  that  certain  stimuli  give  pleasant  mental 
effects  ;  for  instance,  a  sweet  taste,  a  pleasant  smell.  These  pleasures 
also  may  be  due  to  order  among  the  stimuli  that  produce  them,  but  in 
the  present  state  of  our  knowledge  of  the  machinery  of  the  human 
senses,  this  is  difficult  to  prove. 

Since  perception  of  a  thing  is  by  its  very  nature  the  segregation  in  Pleasure  in 
the  mind  of  the  sensations  coming  from  the  thing,  their  comparison  with  ■^'yP"'"' 
memories  of  previous  experience,  and  their  attribution  as  character-  Imagination 
istics  all  to  the  same  exterior  object,  it  follows  that  the  pleasure  of 
perception  as  such  must  be  sought  in  the  relations  of  the  sensations  to   "Ky^ 
each  other,   in  the  relation  of  the  percept  to  the  memories,  desires, 
and  emotions  present  in  the  mind  at  the  time,  and  in  the  character  of 
the  memories  and  emotions  stirred  by  the  particular  act  of  perception. 

Perception  will  be  attended  with  pleasure  if  the  various  sensations 
concerned  are  harmonious  or  have  qualities  in  common.  Part  of  this 
pleasure  is  doubtless  due  merely  to  ease  of  perception.     The  unity  of  - 

a  thing  is  only  another  name  for  the  common  law  governing,  or  the 
common  characteristic  pertaining  to,  all  the  sensations  received  from 
the  thing.  And  the  more  fully  the  law  is  exemplified,  the  more  readily 
is  the  unity  and  separate  existence  of  the  object  perceived.  But  apart 
from  mere  ease  of  perception,  harmony  of  the  sensations  concerned  in 
an  act  of  perception  gives  a  definite  and  very  important  pleasure  of 
its  own.     This  pleasure  forms   part  of  the  effect  of  every  successful 

esthetic  design.     It  is  the  end  in  view  whenever  a  designer  attempts  to  J 

unify  his  work  by  repetition  or  sequence  or  balance  of  parts.     This  we  O  • 

discuss  under  composition  in  Chapter  VII. 

Perception  of  an  object  will  be  pleasant,  if  the  percept  accords  with 
the  desires  in  the  mind.     To  a  wayfarer  on  a  hot  day  a  shade-giving  tree 


lO 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


is  a  pleasant  thing,  even  if  he  may  not  rest  under  it.  Perception  will  be 
pleasant  if  the  memories  called  up  are  in  accordance  with  one  another. 
To  an  architect  a  building  with  all  its  detail  in  the  same  style  would 
be,  in  so  far,  pleasant,  but  a  Gothic  porch  on  a  New  England  colonial 
farmhouse  would  be  unpleasant  to  him,  even  if  by  some  miracle  its 
proportions  were  harmonious  with  those  of  the  house.  Here  his  dis- 
pleasure would  be  caused  by  the  incongruity  of  association.  Percep- 
tion will  be  pleasant  if  the  memories  which  are  stirred  by  it  are  in  them- 
selves pleasant.  The  smell  of  box  bushes  on  a  sunny  day  may  be 
pleasant  to  one  who  loves  old  colonial  gardens,  not  because  of  any  great 
pleasure  from  the  smell  itself,  but  because  of  the  pleasant  memories 
called  up  by  the  smell. 

In  all  these  cases  of  pleasure  in  perception,  the  pleasure  arises  in 
the  same  way  whether  the  pleasurable  thing  is  a  real  object  perceived 
at  the  time,  a  real  object  remembered,  or  an  unreal  object,  created  from 
the  stuff  of  memory  by  the  power  of  the  imagination.  And  in  most  of 
the  above  cases  it  is  obvious  that  the  cause  of  the  pleasure  of  percep- 
tion is  some  kind  of  harmony  or  unity.  In  a  sense  it  can  be  said  that 
seeking  to  discover  unities  in  the  world  is  the  whole  business  of  our 
mental  activity,  so  that  unity  has  a  right  to  the  high  place  which  it 
holds  in  discussions  of  design.  It  is  the  essence  of  the  existence  of 
objects.  Without  it  there  can  be  no  design ;  without  it  in  some  meas- 
ure there  can  be  no  objects. 
Pleasure  in  Intellection  —  or  ideation  —  is  the  mental  comparison  of  a  number 

Intellection  ^f  percepts  and  the  discovery  of  relations  among  them,  thus  producing 
a  concept.  The  pleasure  of  intellection  will  depend  partly  on  the  ac- 
complishment of  the  discovery  of  these  relations,  as  for  instance  com- 
pletion of  a  task,  solution  of  a  puzzle;  and  partly  the  pleasure  will 
depend  on  the  number  and  completeness  of  the  relations  discovered, 
that  is,  on  the  unity  found  to  exist  among  the  percepts  and  between 
the  concept  just  formed  and  the  rest  of  the  content  of  the  mind.  Ex- 
ceptionally, on  the  other  hand,  the  pleasure  is  due  to  a  comic  element, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  "surprise"  features  in  the  Italian  and  older  German 
gardens,  which  owe  the  pleasure  of  their  effect,  when  it  is  pleasant,  to 
the  very  incongruity  of  the  experience  of  their  victim  with  what  he 
would  reasonably  have  expected. 


THEORT    OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN i_i 

The  pleasure  of  intellection  may  be  very  complicated  and  very  keen. 
For  instance,  in  making  a  planting  plan  for  a  bed  in  a  garden  in  a 
difficult  situation,  a  man  finally  produces  an  arrangement  of  twenty 
different  kinds  of  plants  which  shall  go  together  in  sequence  of  bloom, 
which  shall  be  harmonious  in  the  color  of  the  various  plants  that  bloom 
at  the  same  time,  which  shall  be  pleasantly  related  as  to  height,  and 
which  shall  all  be  suited  to  the  cultural  and  climatic  conditions.  The 
intellective  pleasure  which  he  experiences  on  completing  this  portion 
of  his  plan  is  plainly  of  two  kinds  :  first,  pleasure  in  having  accomplished 
his  task,  and  then  pleasure  in  the  complete  and  complicated  unity  of  his 
result.  To  the  spectator  also  this  intellective  pleasure  is  open,  although 
the  pleasure  of  creation  is  largely  the  reward  of  the  designer  alone. 

Sensory,  perceptive,  and  intellective  pleasures  are,  then,  all  to  be 
obtained  as  the  results  of  the  designer's  skill.  He  should  recognize 
each  for  what  it  is,  however;  he  should  strive  for  the  greatest  total 
result,  and  he  should  be  sure  that  in  attaining  one  kind  of  pleasure  he 
has  not  sacrificed  a  greater  amount  of  another. 

That  these  mental  effects  are  the  real  values  to  be  produced  by  the 
designer  is  by  no  means  a  new  conception  in  the  literature  of  landscape 
architecture.     Repton  said, 

"I  confess  that  the  great  object  of  my  ambition  is,  not  merely  to  produce 
a  book  of  pictures,  but  to  furnish  some  hints  for  establishing  the  fact,  that 
true  taste  in  Landscape  Gardening,  as  well  as  in  all  the  other  Polite  Arts,  is  not 
an  accidental  effect,  operating  on  the  outward  senses,  but  an  appeal  to  the 
understanding,  which  is  able  to  compare,  to  separate,  and  to  combine,  the 
various  sources  of  pleasure  derived  from  external  objects,  and  to  trace  them 
to  some  pre-existing  causes  in  the  structure  of  the  human  mind."* 

A  present-day  writer,  Sir  George  Sitwell,  has  given  a  psychological 
basis  to  his  delightful  book  Aji  Essay  on  the  Making  of  Gardens. 

"Art  has  another  function  also:  it  is  concerned  not  only  with  the  scene 
but  with  the  mind  of  the  beholder,  for  more  than  half  of  what  we  see  comes 
from  the  mind.  Here  then  at  last  we  have  found  the  garden-magic  of  Italy, 
in  the  domain  of  Psychology."  f 

*  End  of  the  introduction  to  Sketches  and  Hints  on  Landscape  Gardening,  1794. 
(See  References.) 

t  Page  48.     (See  References.) 


12 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Experience, 
Emotion,  and 
Association 


From  the  ordinary  experience  of  his  life  and  from  observations  which 
he  purposely  makes,  the  artist  acquires  a  store  of  impressions  which 
are  the  material  from  which  his  designs  must  be  wrought.  These 
impressions  tend  to  be  chosen  from  the  infinity  of  impressions  which 
are  presented  to  the  mind,  according  as  they  seem  to  find  their  kin  in 
the  already  acquired  mental  content.  If  they  are  so  akin,  the  pleas- 
urable emotion  which  attends  their  dawning  perception  attracts  the 
attentioa  of  the  artist  to  them  and  makes  them  valuable  and  chosen ; 
and  those  things  which  cause  noticeable  emotion  when  they  are  per- 
ceived are  likely  to  hold  a  place  in  the  memory.  The  artist's  emotion 
may  be  simply  esthetic  pleasure,  or  it  may  be  the  pleasure  of  finding 
something  which  obviously  he  can  use  in  his  design,  or  it  may  be  caused 
by  a  congruity,  of  any  degree  of  complication  and  indefiniteness,  be- 
tween the  perception  and  whatever  else  is  in  his  mind  at  the  time,  — 
some  relationship  with  the  memories,  some  faint  associational  flavor 
so  subtle  that  nothing  may  surely  be  said  of  it,  except  that  its  presence 
in  our  thoughts  is  a  pleasure.  The  designer  whose  mind  is  open  and 
sensitive  to  beautiful  things,  who  responds  to  each  new  experience  of 
beauty  with  a  powerful  emotion,  will  in  the  very  nature  of  things  win 
many  valuable  impressions  from  experiences  which  would  be  dull  and 
unprofitable  to  a  less  sensitive  person.  Also  a  keenness  of  interest  in 
facts  not  primarily  esthetic  will  in  the  long  run  add  to  an  artist's  es- 
thetic power.  An  ability  to  appreciate  the  beauty  of  free  landscape, 
for  instance,  while  it  must  have  its  beginnings  inborn  in  the  mind,  may 
be  greatly  developed  by  a  definite  study  of  landscape  forms,  which  leads 
to  the  perception,  and  so  to  the  enjoyment,  of  subtler  relations  which 
without  study  might  go  unseen.* 

*  This  idea  is  discussed  in  The  Landscape  as  a  Means  of  Culture,  an  article  by 
N.  S.  Shaler  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  Dec.  1898.     (See  References.)  :  — 

"  It  is  evident  that  our  culture  is  near  the  station  where  we  may  hope  for  some 
effort  to  develop  the  landscape  sense  by  a  systematic  training  in  the  arts  which  may 
enable  us  to  appreciate  scenery.  .  .  . 

"  With  the  advance  which  an  assiduous  training  of  the  landscape  sense  brings, 
the  observer  finds  himself  less  in  need  of  the  human  note  in  the  view ;  his  development 
follows  the  course  by  which  the  landscape  motive  became  established.  .  .  . 

"  From  the  limited  though  varied  aspects  of  the  overhumanized  views  in  and 
about  the  town,  the  student  should  pass,  in  a  well-devised  gradation,  to  the  scenes 


THEORT    OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN ij 

If  the  emotional  side  of  his  esthetic  perception  is  strong,  the  artist's 
experience  will  be  richer  in  association,  because  the  emotions  will  stir 
memories  of  previous  emotions,  and  the  kindred  emotion  so  recalled 
may  recall  with  it  the  memory  of  an  experience  which,  except  for  this, 
is  totally  different.  Thus,  through  similar  emotional  concomitant, 
experiences  in  one  realm  of  the  senses  may  be,  as  it  were,  translated 
into  experiences  in  another.  The  harmonies  of  the  symphony  which 
we  now  hear  may  be  enriched  by  the  glories  of  a  remembered  sunset. 
It  is  this  kind  of  association  that  makes  us  speak  of  a  "loud"  color,  a 
"smooth"  sentence,  or  refer  to  architecture  as  "frozen  music."  * 

There  are  many  percepts  which  are  indissolubly  bound  up  with 
memories  of  muscular  motion  ;  not  only  the  percepts  of  distance  and 
height  which  first  expressed  themselves  to  the  mind  in  terms  of  long 

where  pure  nature,  though  the  fields  be  tilled,  controls  the  expression,  and  thence  by  a 
further  step  to  the  primitive  lands  where  there  is  no  trace  of  the  hand  of  man.  As  he 
departs  from  the  realm  of  excessive  culture,  where  the  expression  of  the  earth  every- 
where is  controlled  by  the  artificial,  the  need  increases  of  an  enlargement  of  the  con- 
ception by  the  understanding  of  how  the  natural  forces  have  shaped  the  view.  .  .  . 

"  If,  as  seems  likely,  we  can  bring  into  definite  shape,  by  educative  means,  the  emo- 
tions which  lead  to  pleasure  in  the  landscape,  we  shall  thereby  add  another  important 
art  to  those  which  serve  to  dignify  our  lives.  The  art  of  seeing  the  landscape  has  a 
certain  advantage  over  all  the  others  we  have  invented,  in  that  the  data  it  uses  are 
ever  before  those  who  are  blessed  with  eyes.  Outside  of  prison,  a  man  is  sure  of  the 
sky  —  the  largest,  most  varied,  and  in  some  regards  the  richest  element  of  all  scenes. 
The  earth  about  him  may  be  defiled,  but  rarely  in  such  measure  that  it  will  not  yield 
him  good  fruit.  Every  look  abroad  tempts  him  beyond  himself  into  an  enlarging 
contact  with  nature.  Not  only  are  the  opportunities  for  this  art  ever  soliciting  the 
mind,  but  the  practice  of  it  demands  no  long  and  painful  novitiate.  There  is  much 
satisfaction  at  the  very  beginning  of  the  practice  ;  it  grows  with  exercise,  until  it  opens 
the  world  as  no  other  art  can  do." 

*  "  In  point  of  strength,  pitch,  velocity,  and  rhythm,  sounds  present  to  the  ear 
a  figure,  bearing  that  degree  of  analogy  to  certain  visual  impressions  which  sensations 
of  various  Icinds  bear  to  one  another.  As  there  is,  physiologically  speaking,  such  a 
thing  as  a  vicarious  function  (up  to  a  certain  point),  so  may  sense  impressions,  aestheti- 
cally speaking,  become  vicarious  also.  There  is  a  well-founded  analogy  between  mo- 
tion in  space  and  motion  in  time,  between  the  colour,  texture,  and  size  of  an  object  and 
the  pitch,  '  timbre,'  and  strength  of  a  tone,  and  it  is  for  this  reason  quite  practicable  to 
paint  an  object  musically." 

E.  Hanslick,  The  Beautiful  in  Music,  p.  53  of  English  translation  of  1891. 


H LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

walking  and  hard  climbing,  not  only  the  percepts  of  form  which  were 
associated  with  extension  of  the  arms  or  position  of  the  grasping  hand, 
but  also  percepts  of  shapes  and  spaces  which  are  associated,  perhaps 
quite  unconsciously,  with  a  cramped  and  stooping  posture  or  with  a 
fine  freedom  of  movement,  because  the  emotion  felt  on  beholding  the 
shapes,  and  recalled  in  connection  with  them,  is  the  same  as  that  re- 
ceived through  the  particular  muscular  attitude  which  they  recall.* 
When  any  such  percept  comes  to  the  mind,  the  associated  muscular 
motion  is  recalled,  sometimes  indeed  so  vividly  that  the  motion  itself 
is  automatically  reproduced,  —  for  instance,  the  wide-spread  arms  of 
a  man  describing  a  vast  open  landscape.  And  the  sensations  neces- 
sarily accompanying  this  actual  motion  or  muscular  tension  intensify 
the  emotion  coming  from  the  percept.  There  are,  of  course,  a  great 
many  percepts  which  are  not  themselves  capable  of  direct  motor  ex- 
pression, but  under  these  circumstances  the  necessity  for  some  expres- 
sion finds  vent  in  movements  or  muscular  tensions,  the  emotional 
concomitant  of  which  is  similar  to  the  emotional  state  which  is  being 
expressed.  Contempt,  for  instance,  may  be  expressed  by  a  wry  face 
which  more  directly  represents  the  perception  of  a  bad  odor.  A  man 
looking  at  a  picture  of  a  row  of  columns  in  perspective  may  say,  with 
appropriate  gestures,  "They  grow  smaller  and  smaller  and  smaller." 
He  perceives  the  spatial  sequence  in  the  picture  through  the  temporal 
sequence  of  the  shifting  of  his  own  attention,  and  this  he  expresses  by 
a  temporal  sequence  of  words  and  movements. 

In  their  associational  appeal  to  emotion,  the  senses  of  hearing, 
taste,  and  smell  are  powerful.  Although  they  are  at  a  disadvan- 
tage in  comparison  with  the  sense  of  sight  in  the  amount  of  direct 
information  regarding  an  observed  object  which  they  can  furnish  to  the 
mind,  still,  and  it  may  be  for  this  very  reason,  the  emotional  effect  of 
sounds  and  particularly  of  odors  is  frequently  very  striking.  The  smell 
of  a  certain  flower  may  recall  infallibly  a  certain  emotion  and  perhaps 
a  certain  place,  because  the  smell  stirs  in  the  mind  few  other  memories 
on  which  the  attention  may  fall.  These  simpler  impressions  are  by 
no  means  to  be  neglected  by  the  designer.  The  scent  of  flowers,  the 
song  of  birds,  the  humming  of  bees,  although  they  do  not  intrude  them- 

*  The  well-known  theory  of  Lipps  as  interpreted  by  d'Udine,  in  L'Art  et  le  Geste. 


THEORY    OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN  15 

selves  upon  our  attention,  even  though  they  pass  unnoticed  by  our 
consciousness,  yet  constitute  a  baclcground  of  association,  an  atmos- 
phere of  reality  and  pleasurable  completeness,  which  forms  no  small 
part  of  our  feeling  of  unity  with  the  joyous  and  ordered  universe  which 
we  behold.* 

Through  this  infinitely  complicated  associational  connection  of 
all  our  mental  content,  —  our  memories,  our  emotions,  our  present  sen- 
sations and  perceptions, —  an  experience  in  anyone  realm  of  the  senses, 
or  in  any  one  field  of  thought,  finds,  as  it  were,  kinship  in  the  mind 
with  other  experiences  widely  different,  and  it  is  idle  to  attempt  to  say 
what  train  of  creative  thought,  what  powerful  emotion,  may  not  be 
aroused  by  any  apparently  trivial  experience. 

The  pleasure  caused  by  any  work  of  art  will  be  difl^erent  in  the  mind 
of  each  beholder  as  the  mind  of  each  beholder  is  different.  The  de- 
signer can  be  sure  of  his  effect  only  in  so  far  as  he  can  know  the  mass 
of  memories  to  which  his  design  must  appeal.  There  are  some  experi- 
ences which  are  the  common  lot  of  all  mankind  throughout  the  ages,, 
and  works  of  art  which  appeal  to  the  memories  of  these  will  appeal  to 
ever>'  man,  and  will  live  as  long  as  these  memories  remain  the  common 
property  of  man.  But  works  of  art  which  depend  for  their  interest 
on  knowledge  or  desire  born  of  a  transitory  period  will  die  with  the  de- 
sires which  brought  them  into  being.  In  the  same  way,  a  work  of  art 
designed  for  an  individual  owner,  without  regard  to  the  common  mem- 
ories and  training  of  mankind  at  large,  is  apt  to  please  no  one  but  the 
owner  and  will  probably  not  please  him  for  long. 

The  designer  whose  broad  interest  has  kept  him  in  touch  with  many 
and  varied  ideas,  who  has  accumulated  mental  material  of  many  kinds, 
and  organized  it  in  many  ways,  has  acquired  a  very  real  power  when 
he  comes  to  deal  with  clients  of  different  sorts.  He  is  able  to  put  him- 
self in  their  place,  to  see  the  relative  values  of  things  as  they  see  them, 

*The  pleasure  we  derive  from  colour,  scent,  and  song  in  the  garden  is  a  by- 
product of  evolution,  due  to  that  similarity  of  environment  and  of  power  to  re- 
spond to  it  which  has  cast  our  senses  almost  in  the  same  mould  with  those  of  the 
insects  and  birds;  and  the  significance  of  the  fact  is  that  life  is  one  and  man  a  part 
of  nature,  not  a  supernatural  being  who  has  been  suddenly  intruded  into  a  garden." 
Sitwell,  p.  49,  note  i. 


i6 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Esthetic 
Analysis  in 
Design 


Unity 


and  perhaps,  appreciating  his  client's  inchoate  wishes,  to  complete 
them  consistently,  to  relate  them  logically  to  the  special  circumstances 
and  bring  them  to  a  successful  expression.  And  he  may  thereby  evolve 
something  which  the  client  should  certainly  like  better  than  any  "  ready- 
made"  design,  and  which  may  well  be  more  original  than  anything  which 
could  have  sprung  from  the  designer's  brain  without  the  stimulus  of 
the  client's  personality. 

The  landscape  architect  produces  the  various  forms  of  esthetic 
pleasure  which  we  have  been  discussing,  through  analysis  of  his  prob- 
lem into  its  various  pleasure-giving  possibilities  and  their  synthesis  in 
his  design.  This  process  may  not  be  conscious.  It  is  true  that  the 
brilliant  man,  the  genius,  may  arrive  at  his  goal  by  "feeling,"  and  not 
by  consciously  applied  knowledge.  He  may  make  a  composition  which 
produces  sensory,  perceptive,  and  intellective  pleasure  in  the  highest 
possible  degree  without  having  phrased  to  himself  the  possibilities  of 
these  forms  of  pleasure.  But  this  can  be  done  only  by  a  genius,  and 
few  of  us  are  geniuses  and  none  of  us  are  geniuses  all  the  time.  In 
most  cases,  therefore,  this  esthetic  analysis  can  well  be  a  conscious,  de- 
liberate, and  business-like  process,  which,  while  it  will  never  enable  an 
ordinary  man  to  produce  a  superlative  work  of  art,  will  at  least  help 
him  to  become  a  good  workman,  and  prevent  his  making  many  ele- 
mentary mistakes. 

In  our  discussion  of  the  various  forms  of  pleasure,  we  seemed  to 
have  discovered  that  this  pleasure,  which  it  is  the  purpose  of  the  de- 
signer to  create  in  the  mind  of  the  observer,  is  due  to  the  presence  of 
a  perception  of  some  kind  of  unity.  Man  lives  in  and  is  part  of  an 
organized  universe.  All  the  impressions  which  he  receives,  all  the 
objects  which  he  learns  to  recognize,  all  his  ideas,  have  organization 
as  their  constant  essential  characteristic,  and  the  completeness  and 
kind  of  this  organization  might  well  be  the  source  of  his  pleasure  in 
them. 

We  have  different  names  for  this  completeness  of  organization,  ac- 
cording to  the  field  in  which  it  is  found.  The  unity  may  be  perceived 
in  the  field  of  logic,  in  which  case  it  is  called  truth,  that  is,  the  com- 
plete accordance  of  a  group  of  ideas  with  universal  law  as  we  know  it ; 
or  in  the  field  of  morals,  in  which  case  it  is  called  goodness,  that  is,  the 


THEORT    OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 17 

complete  submission  of  all  aspects  of  an  act  to  a  moral  purpose;  or 
in  the  field  of  economics,  in  which  case  it  is  called  usefulness,  that  is, 
complete  and  organized  fitness  of  all  the  qualities  of  an  object  to  a 
definite  use;  or  in  the  field  of  esthetics,  in  which  case  it  is  called 
beauty. 

We  can  justly  speak  of  judging  of  the  truth  of  a  design,  when  we  Logical 
determine  the  truth  of  the  designer's  underlying  ideas,  when  we  com-  ^"">' 
pare  his  methods  of  organization  or  synthesis  with  what  we  consider  to 
be  fundamental  and  correct  logical  methods.  Where  our  observation 
of  another  person's  design  leads  us  to  the  conclusion  that  the  designer 
has  based  his  work  on  premises  which  we  consider  to  be  contrary  to 
fact,  or  on  reasoning  which  we  consider  illogical,  our  displeasure  may  be 
said  to  be  due  to  a  perception  of  the  lack  of  truth  of  the  designer's 
ideas;  but  much  more  frequently  our  displeasure  falls  not  upon  the 
false  ideas,  but  upon  some  of  their  ill-contrived  or  ugly  concrete  results. 
For  example,  the  fidelity  of  a  landscape  architect  to  the  natural  char- 
acter of  a  landscape  which  he  is  preserving  might  be  commended  as 
truthful  expression  in  his  design.  If  he  introduced  an  object  discord- 
ant with  this  character,  he  would  probably  be  blamed  for  the  ugliness 
of  his  design,  but  the  cause  of  the  ugliness  would  be  the  falsity  of  his 
esthetic  conception.  Sincerity  in  design,  the  obvious  whole-souled 
logical  carr}'ing-out  of  a  given  premise  to  its  conclusion,  commonly 
gives  intellectual  pleasure  in  the  "truth"  of  the  designer's  treatment 
'  even  though  the  observer  does  not  agree  with  the  premises.  What  is 
most  commonly  spoken  of  as  lack  of  truth  in  design  is  the  case  where 
the  designer  endeavors  to  make  a  thing  appear  what  it  is  not,  where  he 
paints  imitation  stonework  on  a  board  fence  or  constructs  for  decoration 
a  door  which  cannot  be  opened.  Attempts  of  this  kind  range  from 
puerile  or  cheap  deceits  to  perfectly  legitimate  effects,  such  as  dimin- 
ishing the  scale  of  the  farther  part  of  a  design,  that  the  whole  design 
may  seem  larger.  This  aspect  of  the  subject  we  shall  discuss  more  at 
length  in  Chapter  \TI. 

The  moral  consideration  has  a  place  when  one  judges  the  result  on  Ethical  Unity 
the  community  of  the  completed  work  of  the  designer.     Parks  have  a 
positive  ethical  value,  that  is,  their  existence  may  greatly  promote  the 
moral  welfare  of  the  community,  and  indeed  this  is  one  of  the  strongest 


i8 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

single  arguments  for  their  existence.*  The  designer  should  also  have  in 
mind  minor  ethical  considerations,  and  avoid  in  his  design  such  arrange- 
ments as  might  serve  as  temptation  to  ill-doing.  But  the  ethical  value 
in  landscape  work  is  to  be  obtained  only  through  the  esthetic  and  eco- 
nomic value  of  the  objects  created,  and  so  ethical  unity,  while  a  moving 
force,  is  seldom  a  directly  governing  consideration  in  landscape  design. 
Economic  The  great  majority  of  the  objects    which  man   makes    take  their 

^'^^^y  shapes,  as  they  take  their  names,  from  their  fitness  to  some  economic 

purpose.  It  is  difficult  for  man  to  refrain  from  attempting  to  invest 
them  with  some  beauty,  but  the  first  cause  of  their  creation  is  their 
use.  The  primary  value  of  such  objects  is  their  ability  to  satisfy  a 
physical  need ;  they  give  a  man  warmth  or  light  or  shelter  or  whatever 
one  of  the  innumerable  satisfactions  he  is  for  the  instant  engaged  in 
winning  from  the  surrounding  world.  The  well-considered  fitness  of 
a  thing  to  its  use  gives  a  pleasure  beyond  the  pleasure  of  the  use,  beyond 
the  mere  knowledge  that  this  pleasure  is  possible  :  an  intellectual 
pleasure  in  the  completeness  of  the  organization  of  the  thing  itself. 
Also,  the  completeness  of  physical  organization  which  makes  an  ob- 
ject serve  well  its  economic  purpose  is  very  apt  to  manifest  itself  in 
such  a  relation  of  part  to  part  that  the  object  gives  also  esthetic  pleas- 
ure.f     No  example  of  this  is  better  than  the  often-quoted  sailing  ship.f 

*  "  .  .  .  Every  evil  to  which  men  are  specially  liable  when  living  in  towns,  is  likely 
to  be  aggravated  in  the  future,  unless  means  are  devised  and  adapted  in  advance  to  pre- 
vent it."  .  .  . 

"  Is  it  doubtful  that  it  does  men  good  to  come  together  ...  in  pure  air  and  under 
the  light  of  heaven,  or  that  it  must  have  an  influence  directly  counteractive  to  that  of 
the  ordinary  hard,  hustling  working  hours  of  town  life  .?"... 

"  The  question  remains  whether  the  contemplation  of  beauty  in  natural  scenery 
is  practically  of  much  value  in  counteracting  and  alleviating  these  evils.  ...  I  do 
not  propose  to  argue  this  question  ...  for  if  the  object  of  parks  is  not  that  thus  sug- 
gested, I  know  of  none  which  justifies  their  cost." 

F.  L.  Olmsted,  Sr.,  Public  Parks,  1902,  pp.  32,40-41, 11 3-1 14.    (See  References.) 

t  Cf.  What  would  be  fair  must  first  be  fit,  reprinted  in  Charles  Eliot,  Landscape 
Architect,  pp.  549-553-     (See  References.) 

J  Cited  by  F.  L.  Olmsted,  Jr.,  as  "  an  example  used  by  my  father  in  discussing 
village  improvement,"  in  City  Planning:  an  Introductory  Address,  pp.  31-32  in  Pro- 
ceedings of  National  Conference  on  City  Planning,  1910.  Also  published  separately 
by  the  American  Civic  Association. 


THEORT    OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 19 

We  are  to  some  degree  concerned  with  unity  in  the  fields  of  logic  and  Esthetic 
ethics,  and,  since  we  are  practitioners  of  an  applied  art  and  a  profession,      ""^ 
we  have,  almost  as  a  constant  factor,  the  economic  element  of  use  in  all 
our  designs;   nevertheless,  since  we  are  practitioners  of  a  fine  art,  our 
field  is  that  of  esthetics,  and  unity  in  this  field  is  our  especial  concern. 

As  we  have  found,  the  artist  in  the  course  of  his  life  receives  many  Esthetic 
impressions  from  external  objects  which  he  calls  beautiful,  that  is,  he  ^''P''^"^°'^ 
perceives  with  pleasure  the  unity  of  certain  relations  within  these  ob-  Impression 
jects,  and  he  stores  up  in  his  mind  the  memory  of  the  pleasurable  re- 
lations. When  he  designs,  when  he  sets  out  to  produce  a  pleasurable 
emotion  in  the  mind  of  someone  else  who  shall  behold  the  object  which 
he  makes,  he  arranges  or  organizes  the  parts  of  this  object  according 
to  these  remembered  relations ;  that  is,  he  expresses  in  his  design  those 
relations  with  which  he  has  himself  been  previously  impressed.  And 
the  pleasurable  emotion  in  the  mind  of  the  beholder  arises  from  his 
perception  of  this  organization,  of  this  subjection  to  a  common  law,  of 
this  unity  of  the  relation  of  the  parts  of  the  object.  The  state  of  mind 
of  the  observer  might  be  exactly  the  same  if  the  pleasurable  relations 
which  he  finds  to  exist  in  the  thing  observed  had  come  there  purely  by 
accident  and  not  by  design.  It  is  the  observer's  perception,  his  own 
organization  of  the  relations,  that  causes  his  pleasure.  In  this  sense, 
then,  a  thing  which  is  perceived  to  be  unified  and  organized  may  be 
said  to  express  to  the  mind  of  the  observer  this  unity  and  organization  ; 
and  in  the  field  of  esthetics,  completeness  of  this  expression,  percep- 
tion of  complete  esthetic  organization  with  its  necessarily  accom- 
panying pleasurable  emotion,  is  what  we  call  beauty.  Actually,  we 
objectify  this  pleasurable  perception  and  we  attribute  it  as  a  quality 
to  an  object,  calling  such  an  object  beautiful,  just  as  we  objectify  our 
perceptions  of  yellowness  and  roundness,  which  go  to  make  our  percept 
of  an  orange,  and  call  the  orange  round  and  yellow.  And  so,  speaking 
objectively,  objects  are  called  beautiful  which  have  a  physical  organiza- 
tion such  that  their  characteristics  cause  this  perfect  synthesis. 

We  will,  then,  define  beauty  for  our  purposes,  in  the  terms  of  the  Definition 
Italian    philosopher    Croce,*   as    "successful    expression,"  "complete  °J  ^'<"*'y 

•  Benedetto  Croce,  Estetica  come  Scienza  delF  Espressione  e  Linguistica  generale, 
Milano,  1902.     English  translation  by  Douglas  Ainslee. 


20 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

spiritual  esthetic  synthesis,"  that  is,  perception  of  complete  esthetic 
organization. 

Beauty  is  thus  complete  unity  of  organization ;  ugliness  is  lack  of 
unity.  If  a  thing  has  beauty,  but  fails  of  being  absolutely  beautiful, 
it  can  in  every  case  be  shown  that  such  beauty  as  it  has  is  beauty  of 
certain  parts  or  aspects  which  are  in  themselves  perfectly  unified. 
Beauty  can  exist  in  one  degree  only,  perfect  beauty;  ugliness,  being 
disunity,  can  exist  in  all  degrees,  from  what  might  be  called  beauty  with 
a  flaw  to  disunity  so  complete  that  the  mind  can  hardly  grasp  the  dis- 
similar mass  of  detail  as  forming  one  entity  at  all. 

Many  definitions  of  beauty  make  it  not  a  perceptive  synthesis,  as 
we  have  just  said,  but  an  emotion.  Professor  Santayana,  for  instance, 
says,  "Beauty  is  pleasure  regarded  as  the  quality  of  a  thing."*  The 
difference  is,  we  believe,  purely  one  of  statement.  Any  perception  is 
inevitably  attended  with  an  emotion,  pleasurable  or  otherwise,  this 
emotion  being  in  a  great  majority  of  cases  so  slight  as  not  to  be  noticed. 
As  the  unity  of  an  object  becomes  more  and  more  evident,  the  ease  and 
completeness  of  the  synthesis  —  arising  from  unity  of  impressions, 
and  consonance  of  these  with  the  mental  content  —  becomes  greater, 
and  the  consequent  pleasurable  emotion  becomes  stronger.  Thus  a 
beautiful  object,  that  is,  an  object  so  organized  as  to  cause  a  complete 
synthesis  in  the  observer's  mind,  should  be  perceived  with  the  greatest 
possible  amount  of  this  kind  of  pleasure.  And  as  the  act  of  perception 
is  in  itself  commonly  unconscious,  it  is  this  pleasurable  emotion  which 
attracts  our  attention  as  the  essence  of  beauty. 

The  pleasure  accompanying  the  formation  of  a  percept  is  greater 
as  this  percept  fits  more  completely  the  ideal  for  this  particular  kind 
of  percept  existing  already  in  the  mind  of  the  beholder.  The  more 
nearly  complete  the  unity  of  this  percept  and  its  subjection  to  its  own 
ruling  law,  the  more  nearly  it  usually  fits  this  ideal,  since  this  ideal  is 
normally  formed  under  the  same  law.  It  is  emphasis  of  this  aspect 
of  the  perception  of  beauty  that  has  given  rise  to  definitions  of  beauty 
as  approximation  to  an  ideal.  The  conception  of  beauty  as  approxi- 
mation to  an  ideal  or  standard  has  caused  people  to  believe  that  there 
must  be  universal  standards  of  beauty  to  which  objects  must  conform 

*  George  Santayana,  The  Sense  of  Beauty,  New  York,  C.  Scribner's  Sons,  1896. 


THEORT    OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 2^ 

to  be  beautiful ;  but  this  overlooks  the  fundamental  fact  that  the 
standards  for  each  observer  come  from  his  own  experience  of  the 
world,  depend  on  the  constitution  of  his  own  mind,  and  are  therefore 
inevitably  different  for  each  observer. 

When  a  man  has  perceived  objects  of  the  same  class  many  times.  Types 
he  discovers  (not  necessarily  consciously)  that  there  are  certain  char- 
acteristics always  pertaining  to  examples  of  this  particular  class  of 
object,  while  other  characteristics  are  only  occasionally  and,  as  it  were, 
accidentally  present.  Thus  he  forms  in  his  mind  a  type  *  of  this 
particular  object,  that  is,  a  memory  of  the  average,  a  sort  of  composite 
photograph,  which  he  uses  thereafter  in  perceiving  examples  of  the 
class.  But  the  characteristics  of  this  type  are  not  a  mathematical 
average  of  the  observed  essential  characteristics  of  all  examples ;  they 
are  modified,  exaggerated,  in  the  direction  in  which  the  attention  and 
interest  of  the  observer  lies  ;  commonly,  therefore,  they  are  modified 
in  the  direction  of  their  ability  to  give  pleasure. 

A  type  the  characteristics  of  which  have  been  modified  as  far  as  is  Ideals 
possible  for  the  observer  in  the  direction  of  perfect  unity,  consequently 
in  the  direction  of  pleasure,  is  called  an  ideal.*  This  ideal  may  be  en- 
tirely the  product  of  the  experience  of  the  individual  observer,  but  each 
man  observes  what  are  the  ideals  of  his  fellow-men,  and  it  is  a  human 
characteristic  for  each  individual  to  be  deeply  influenced  by  these  ideals, 
and  to  modify  his  own  ideals  toward  accordance  with  them.  Thus 
there  arise  class  or  social  ideals,  but  it  is  plain  that  there  is  nothing  uni- 
versal or  ultimate  about  them ;  they  are  merely  composites  of  individ- 
ual ideals,  which  in  turn  are  merely  modified  composites  of  individual  ex- 
periences. There  can  therefore  be  in  the  ideal  no  characteristic  which 
has  not  been  perceived  in  some  degree  in  the  experience  of  the  observer. 

This  ideal  or  idealized  type,  we  may  observe,  is  the  result  of  per- 
ceptive synthesis  according  to  some  definite  scheme ;  in  a  sense,  indeed, 
we  might  say  that  the  ideal  itself  is  another  name  for  the  best  scheme 
of  organization  of  the  qualities  of  the  object  and  their  mental  effect 
which  the  observer  knows.  The  ideals,  therefore,  in  each  man's  mind, 
being  the  results  of  his  own  modes  of  synthesis,  differ  from  man  to 
man  as  men's  modes  of  synthesis  differ. 

*  Santayana,  Sense  of  Beauty. 


22 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Landscape 
Character 


Taste  and  Taste  is  the  name  for  the  mode  of  this  esthetic  synthesis.     The 

^'>'^'  mode  of  organization  by  which  a  designer  perceives  and  synthesizes 

will  be  the  mode  of  organization  which  can  be  perceived  in  his  work 
as  a  designer.  This  perceived  mode  of  organization  is  called  the  de- 
signer's style,  and  thus  a  designer's  style  is  merely  the  objectified  ex- 
pression of  his  taste.  Taste  is  involved  in  the  appreciation  of  beauty ; 
style,  in  the  creation  of  beauty.  The  artist  must  first  have  the  power  to 
appreciate,  to  perceive  organization,  but  he  must  have  also  the  power 
to  express,  to  put  his  idea  into  physical  form  (speech,  action,  written 
word,  work  of  sculpture,  architecture,  landscape  architecture),  so  that 
some  one  else  can  perceive  with  pleasure  the  organization  on  which  his 
work  of  art  is  based. 

Just  as  we  can  recognize  in  a  man-created  object  a  mode  of  esthetic 
organization  which  expresses  the  taste  of  the  designer  and  which  we 
call  style,  so  may  we  recognize  in  an  example  of  natural  scenery  a  mode 
of  esthetic  organization  which  is  a  result  of  the  operation  of  the  forces 
of  nature  not  guided  by  man,  and  which  we  may  call  character.  Per- 
fection of  esthetic  organization  manifested  in  landscape  character  is 
just  as  potent  a  source  of  beauty  as  is  perfection  of  esthetic  organization 
manifested  in  style ;  but  its  appreciation  often  demands  a  more  highly 
developed  esthetic  sensitiveness  and  greater  keenness  of  perception, 
because  its  organization  is  likely  to  be  of  a  more  complicated  and  less 
obvious  kind. 
Landscape  Every  object  in  the  world,  then,  which  has  style,  or  character,  or 

Effect  ^j^gjj.  perfection  in  some  aspect  —  beauty  —  thereby  arouses  in   us  a 

corresponding  emotion ;  but  every  object  has  a  further  emotional 
eflFect,  partly  due  at  times  to  less  characteristic  attributes  of  the  object, 
even  perhaps  to  very  transitory  and  unessential  conditions,  and  always 
varying  in  some  degree  with  our  mental  attitude.  There  is  in  us  a 
general  emotional  reaction  to  the  whole  experience  and  its  associations, 
which  in  its  totality  we  feel  as  a  mood,  or  state  of  mind.  When  this 
mood  is  at  all  definite,  we  are  likely  to  attribute  it  as  a  quality  —  by 
a  sort  of  personification  —  to  the  object  which  immediately  causes 
it,  and,  for  instance,  to  call  a  landscape  peaceful,  smiling,  majestic, 
gloomy,  as  the  case  may  be.  This  total  emotional  reaction,  com- 
monly attributed  to  the  landscape  as  a  quality,  we  shall  call  landscape 


THEORT    OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


23 


effect.  Its  clarity,  its  completeness,  its  power,  will  be  the  result  and 
the  measure  of  the  style  or  character  manifested  in  the  whole  landscape 
and  in  its  component  parts.  Although  landscape  effect  is  in  many  cases 
so  subtle  and  complicated  a  thing  that  it  is  impossible  to  determine  all 
the  causes  that  bring  it  about,  it  is  still  a  great  essential  to  be  sought  by 
the  designer,  for  it  is  the  whole  and  the  only  ultimate  esthetic  value 
which  a  landscape  can  possess. 


^^ 


CHAPTER  III 


Taste, 
Individual 
and 
Community 


TASTE,    IDEALS,    STYLE,   AND   CHARACTER   IN   LANDSCAPE 

DESIGN 

Taste,  individual  and  community  —  Development  of  taste  —  "  Schools  "  and  tradi- 
tion —  Teaching  and  taste  —  Criticism  —  Self-criticism  in  design  —  Choice  of 
IDEALS  —  Perfection  —  Imagination  and  genius  —  Style  :  Individual  style  — 
Historic  styles  —  Humanized  and  naturalistic  styles  —  Interpretation  of  land- 
scape CHARACTER. 

According  to  the  natural  constitution  of  a  person's  mind,  and  accord- 
ing to  the  store  of  memories  which  have  come  to  him  through  experi- 
ence, he  likes  certain  things  and  dislikes  certain  other  things.  He  has 
inevitably  acquired  a  personal  and  individual  taste.  In  most  people 
this  is  not  consciously  acquired,  nor  consciously  applied,  and  is  to  be 
discovered  only  by  the  man's  emotional  reaction  in  each  individual 
case.  A  man  may  however  go  consciously  to  work  to  define  and  cul- 
tivate his  individual  taste.  Possibly  he  may  analyze  his  own  experi- 
ences and  determine  what  it  is  in  each  that  makes  it  pleasing  or  dis- 
pleasing, so  that  in  time  he  has  found  certain  laws  by  which  his  own 
likes  or  dislikes,  at  any  rate,  seem  to  be  governed.  His  taste,  so  cul- 
tivated, might  be  quite  at  variance  with  the  taste  of  his  fellows. 
Actually,  however,  as  man  is  a  very  imitative  animal,  each  person  is 
greatly  influenced  in  his  likes  and  dislikes  by  what  he  discovers  to  be 
the  likes  and  dislikes  of  his  fellows.  This  is  a  very  deep-seated  instinct, 
and  may  well  trace  its  origin  to  the  time  when  similar  thinking  by  the 
whole  tribe  was  an  important  means  of  tribal  unity  and  safety.  It 
comes  about,  therefore,  that  if  a  number  of  people  live  together  under 
the  same  circumstances,  they  will  have  the  same  taste,  to  a  considerable 
extent,  through  similarity  of  experience  and  through  imitation,  and  so, 
even  without  any  conscious  fostering  of  taste,   there  may  be  com- 

24 


TASTE,   IDEALS,    STTLE,    CHARACTER      25 

munity  or  even  national  taste,  recognizable  as  a  fairly  constant  and 
definite  thing. 

The  taste  of  individuals  and  of  communities  develops,  or  at  any  Development 
rate  changes,  with  time,  coordinately  with  their  changing  fund  of  ex-  °/  ^'"'^ 
perience.  People  with  undeveloped  and  simple  minds  are  likely  to 
prefer  obvious  effects,  bright  colors,  evident  and  man-made  composi- 
tions. As  their  experience  of  beautiful  things  increases,  they  may 
come  to  enjoy  more  subtle  and  complicated  harmonies,  more  restrained 
designs,  and  develop  an  esthetic  sensitiveness  which  will  enable  them 
to  see  and  enjoy  beauty  in  objects  which  before  would  have  given  them 
no  pleasure.* 

A  person's  taste  may  also  be  developed  by  being  intentionally  modeled  "  Schools  " 
on  that  of  another.  The  taste  of  some  artist  or  group  of  artists  may  1'"',.  . 
become  especially  noted  and  may  collect  a  group  of  disciples  following 
a  master  and  forming  a  "School."  A  definite  body  of  taste  of  this 
kind  tends  to  perpetuate  itself  for  a  considerable  time  in  the  same  way 
that  community  or  national  taste  does.  Such  traditions  of  taste  for 
work  along  definite  lines  are  exceedingly  valuable  to  the  progress  of 
art.  The  individual  artist  who  is  willing  to  base  his  work  on  the  work 
of  his  predecessors  can  profit  by  their  experience ;  and  the  conception 
on  which  the  school  is  founded  may  thus  ultimately  be  carried,  perhaps 
through  generations  of  artists,  to  its  most  complete  expression.  But 
a  school  so  perpetuated  may  end  by  producing  nothing  but  bad  work, 
because  its  fundamental  conception,  which  was  at  first  a  life-giving  prin- 
ciple, has  been  supplanted  by  some  of  its  mere  outward  manifestations, 
some  trick  of  the  trade,  and  has  become  only  a  dead  formula.  Or 
it  may  be  that  the  constantly  changing  needs  and  thoughts  of  the  com- 
munity may  no  longer  be  expressed  by  the  tradition,  so  that  this  dies 
because  it  finds  no  new  artists  to  carry  it  on. 

There  will  always  be  certain  men  whose  individual  likes  and  dis- 
likes are  so  strong,  whose  minds  organize  their  experiences  so  definitely 
and  so  originally,  that  they  refuse  to  be  bound  by  the  common  taste 
of  their  community.  If  they  have  also  the  gift  of  artistic  expression, 
and  if  their  ideas  prove  to  be  in  some  measure  an  expression  of  the 

*  Cf.  the  section  Experience,  Emotion,  and  Association,  Chapter  II,  p.  12,  and 
reference  to  Shaler. 


26 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


needs  of  mankind,  perhaps  felt  before  but  never  given  form,  they  may 
be  acclaimed  as  geniuses,  and  may  put  the  stamp  of  their  personality 
on  a  new  school,  which  will  arise  and  do  its  work,  and  eventually  in  its 
turn  be  supplanted  by  some  other  conception  of  art.  But  not  all  such 
innovations  are  improvements.  Many  of  these  conceptions,  based  on 
some  insignificant  consideration  or  some  evanescent  public  fancy,  may 
be  worthy  of  the  name  of  nothing  more  than  fashions  or  fads. 
Teaching  Taste  may  be  deliberately  developed  by  teaching.     Wherever  any 

and  Taste  professional  instruction  is  given  in  a  fine  art,  such  as  landscape  archi- 

tecture, the  teacher  may  strive  to  cultivate  the  taste  of  his  pupil  in  one 
of  two  ways.  He  may  in  each  problem  under  discussion  give  his  own 
judgment,  and  say  categorically  that  in  his  opinion  such  a  solution  is 
good,  such  another  bad ;  and  by  noting  enough  such  decisions,  the 
pupil  may  be  able  to  learn  what  the  taste  of  the  teacher  is  and  to  know 
what  his  decision  would  probably  be  in  a  new  case.  On  the  other 
hand  the  teacher  may  point  out  in  each  problem  what  he  considers  to 
be  the  important  elements,  and  allow  the  pupil  to  make  his  own  deci- 
sion, which  the  constitution  of  his  own  mind  inevitably  brings  about. 
In  this  way,  too,  the  pupil  should  ultimately  develop  a  definite  and  con- 
sistent taste ;  but  it  will  be  his  own  taste,  based  less  on  a  cold  intel- 
lectual memory  of  another  man's  decisions,  and  more  on  his  own  natural 
esthetic  preferences.  There  is  little  question  that  the  second  of  these 
methods  is  usually  much  the  better. 
Criticism  The  purpose  of  the  artist  is  to  express  to  the  beholders  through 

his  work  of  art  ideas  and  emotions  with  which  he  has  been  previously 
impressed  in  his  experience.  The  critic  on  the  other  hand  endeavors 
to  understand  the  work  of  the  artist,  to  discover  the  esthetic  principles 
on  which  its  effect  is  based,  and  to  explain  these  principles  to  others  so 
that  they  may  better  understand  the  artist's  work  and  get  more  pleas- 
ure from  it.  Thus  the  critic,  too,  is  concerned  in  having  the  beholder 
impressed  with  the  emotion  expressed  by  the  artist,  but  the  critic's 
own  work  expresses  not  so  much  esthetic  emotion  as  intellectual  truth. 
He  interprets  the  design  intellectually  by  setting  it  forth  in  its  logical 
relations.* 

*  "  The  three  types  of  criticism  which  I  have  called  classical,  romantic,  and  scien- 
tific —  the  three  sorts  of  critics,  described  by  me  as  judges,  showmen,  natural  histori- 


Drairim  ii/  A.  B.  LeBatUUHa 


CYPRESS   ALLEY,   \  ILLA  GAMBERAIA 


U~RA7r 


TASTE,   IDEALS,    STTLE,    CHARACTER      27 

In  actually  judging  a  work  of  landscape  design  or  of  nature,  the 
critic  seldom  consciously  applies  the  laws  of  balance,  rhythm,  repeti- 
tion, and  so  on,  directly,  and  considers  the  thing  good  or  bad  accord- 
ing as  it  does  or  does  not  submit  itself  to  these  laws ;  rather  does  the 
critic  use  his  knowledge  of  these  laws  to  differentiate  and  group  his 
memories  of  experience  so  that  the  vital  part  of  each  experience  as  it 
relates  to  visual  beauty  shall  remain  in  his  mind.  His  actual  judg- 
ments of  objects  are  made  in  the  light  of  this  experience,  to  be  sure,  but 
rather  esthetically  and,  as  it  were,  automatically  than  with  conscious 
logic.  In  this  way  the  critic  judges  by  trained  feeling,  but  in  explain- 
ing his  judgments  he  must  give  the  logical  relations  of  the  causes  of  his 
feeling. 

In  deciding  upon  his  design,  the  landscape  architect  submits  the  Self-criticism 
product  of  his  imagination  to  his  own  criticism.  He  may  be  able  in  *"  Design 
some  sort  to  express  his  tentative  decisions  graphically,  and  so  give 
himself  something  visible  to  consider,  but  for  the  most  part  he  must 
call  up  his  projected  design  before  his  mind's  eye,  and  accept,  discard, 
modify,  recast,  until  the  result  is  the  nearest  approach  to  perfection 
which  he  can  compass. 

In  approaching  his  problem  the  choice  among  ideals  to  be  expressed  Choice  of 
is  the  first  choice  which  he  must  make.  The  determination  of  his  ideal  t^""!^^ 
for  any  particular  design  may  well  be  a  result  of  various  apparently 
conflicting  considerations  of  use  and  appearance  and  the  desires  of  the 
designer.  He  may  for  instance  be  obliged  to  choose  an  ideal  more 
modest  than  that  which  he  would  have  taken  if  no  financial  considera- 
tions had  intervened ;  but  it  is  as  absolute  an  artistic  triumph  to  work 
out  a  good  design  for  the  informal  surroundings  of  a  cottage  as  for  the 
terrace  gardens  of  a  palace.     The  designer  may  be  obliged  to  make 

ans  —  co-exist,  and  have,  to  some  extent,  always  co-existed,  although  it  is  correct 
to  view  them  as  representing  successive  stages  in  time.  The  true  critic  must  combine 
all  three  types  in  himself,  and  hold  the  balance  by  his  sense  of  their  reciprocal  rela- 
tions. He  cannot  abnegate  the  right  to  judge ;  he  cannot  divest  himself  of  subjective 
tastes  which  colour  his  judgment;  but  it  is  his  supreme  duty  to  train  his  faculty  of 
judgment  and  to  temper  his  subjectivity  by  the  study  of  things  in  their  historical 
connections." 

J.  A.  Syraonds,  Essays  Speculative  and  Suggestive.  From  the  essay,  On  Some 
Principles  of  Criticism. 


28 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Imagination 
and  Genius 


adjustments  and  accept  substitutes  in  choosing  his  ideal  for  the  solu- 
tion of  his  problem.     But,  having  chosen  it,  no   compromise  should 
enter  into  his  working  it  out. 
Perfection  Perfection  is  the  complete  realization  of  one  ideal.     There  are  as 

many  perfections  as  there  are  ideals.  No  one  object  can  contain  all 
perfections.  What  is  beautiful  in  a  Japanese  garden  may  be  hideous 
in  a  French  parterre.  Perfection,  therefore,  often  requires  in  the  de- 
signer a  kind  of  bigotry.  It  demands  absolute  sacrifice  of  all  charac- 
teristics, beauties  as  well  as  faults,  which  are  not  the  characteristics  of 
the  particular  ideal  which  is  being  sought.  The  more  clearly  defined 
the  ideal  and  the  more  whole-souled  the  pursuit  of  it,  the  greater  the 

approach  to  perfection.  ____ 

In  the  choice  of  this  ideal  is  the  landscape  architect's  great  oppor- 
tunity. Here  he  must  use  the  constructive  imagination  which  is  the 
power  that  makes  him  an  artist.  No  two  problems  are  ever  alike,  and 
the  true  artist  will  expend  his  greatest  endeavors  in  discerning  and  in- 
terpreting the  essence  of  each  problem,  drawing  from  what  seem  to  be 
incongruities  and  difficulties  an  inspiration  for  a  more  original  solution 
than  would  otherwise  have  come  into  being.  The  more  the  designer 
studies  each  problem  in  all  its  relations,  without  assuming  that  it  is 
necessarily  similar  to  any  problem  which  has  been  solved  before,  the 
more  he  trusts  his  own  logical  solutions,  his  own  personal  emotions,  not 
following  blindly  the  accepted  standards  of  his  fellows  merely  because 
they  are  accepted,  the  more  does  his  work  partake  of  the  quality  of 
/         Genius  and  the  more  likely  it  is  to  furnish  inspiration  for  the  designs  of 

his  successors. . - 

Individual  The  particular  experience   and   training  of  the  individual   artist, 

^'y'^  together  with  the  particular  bent  of  his  own  mind,  combine  to  give 

him  his  own  set  of  ideals  and  his  personal  taste.  The  expression  of  this 
taste  in  his  work  we  call  his  personal  style.  From  the  examination  of 
a  number  of  the  works  of  a  finished  landscape  designer,  a  critic  could 
tell  with  some  certainty  what  considerations,  esthetic  and  economic, 
seemed  to  the  designer  paramount  and  most  worthy  of  attention,  and 
what  methods  of  organization  seemed  to  him  the  best  for  producing  his 
effects.  If  he  is  the  master  of  a  real  style  and  not  merely  of  a  number 
of  tricks  and  trademarks,  his  work  will  be  characterized  by  something 


TASTE,    IDEALS,    STTLE,    CHARACTER      29 

more  than  the  recurrence  of  certain  forms  of  decoration,  the  choice  of 
certain  trees,  or  the  repetition  of  certain  stock  arrangements  of  ele- 
ments.* The  style  of  a  good  designer  will  be  characterized  rather,  for 
instance,  by  a  severe  simplicity  and  a  directness  of  meeting  the  needs 
of  his  problem,  by  a  delightful  and  somewhat  whimsical  play  of  fancy, 
or  by  a  reverence  for  and  sympathetic  interpretation  of  certain  laws  of 
nature.  In  many  cases  his  work  may  be  so  truly  a  work  of  art  that  it 
conveys  to  the  beholder  very  directly  the  pleasure  which  the  designer 
felt  in  the  particular  mode  of  organization  which  he,  as  it  were,  recom- 
mends to  the  world  by  his  design,  and  this  pleasure  will  seem  to  be  the 
essence  of  the  style.  A  powerful  personal  style  readily  finds  imitators, 
and  it  may  thus  come  to  be,  like  that  of  Le  Notre  in  France,  like  that 
of  Olmsted  in  America,  the  nucleus  about  which  an  historic  style 
crystallizes. 

When  we  talk  of  historic  styles  in  landscape  design  we  mean  the  Historic 
typical  modes  of  esthetic  organization  which  characterize  the  differ-  %^'^-f 
ent  kinds  of  landscape  design  which  men  have  done  in  the  past.  Let 
us  see  on  what  fundamental  circumstances  these  modes  of  organiza- 
tion must  depend.  All  landscape  designs  differ  essentially  according 
to  three  factors  in  their  making:  first,  their  physical  environment,  — 
the  topography,  country,  climate,  vegetation,  materials  of  construc- 
tion, f  and  so  on;  second,  the  people  who  make  them  and  for  whom 
they  are  made,  —  their  nationality,  traditions,  tastes,  training,  and 
other  social  conditions ;  and  third,  really  the  product  of  the  first  and 
second  factors,  their  function,  the  purpose  for  which  they  are  made,  — 
for  producing  flowers,  fruits,  or  vegetables,  for  pleasure  in  design  only, 
for  comfort,  for  magnificence  and  display,  or  for  whatever  satisfaction 
the  designer  may  seek  under  the  circumstances.     It  is   impossible  to 

*  "  We  content  ourselves,  only  too  usually,  in  art,  with  the  externals  of  a  foreign 
style,  and  are  satisfied,  if  we  can  say,  '  that  is  Greek,'  '  that  is  Gothic,'  although 
without  doubt,  if  a  Greek  artist,  or  one  from  the  Middle  Ages,  should  rise  from  the  dead, 
he  would  shake  his  head  doubtfully  at  our  doings.  He  would  probably  say  to  us : 
'  It  does  not  matter  what  we  have  made,  but  hozv  we  have  made  it.'  " 

Translated  from  Lothar  Abel's  Gartenarchitektur,  1876,  p.  15,  quoting  Jakob  Falke. 

t  For  a  discussion  of  materials  as  motiving  style  in  the  arts,  see  Gottfried  Semper's 
Der  Stil  in  der  technischen  und  tektonischen  Kiinsten,  or  Prinzhorn's  dissertation  upon 
Semper's  work. 


3° 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Humanized 
and 

Naturalistic 
Styles 


say  in  all  cases  just  what  features  of  a  landscape  design  are  traceable 
to  the  environment,  what  to  the  people,  what  to  conscious  purpose. 
All  matters  of  expression  of  the  people  by  their  work,  conscious  or  un- 
conscious, are  in  large  part  their  previous  environment  showing  itself 
in  their  expressed  ideas  ;  and  much  of  the  environment  of  civilized  men 
is  of  their  own  making  and  so  itself  the  expression  of  the  people.  We 
can  say,  however,  that  all  the  different  varieties  of  landscape  designs 
owe  their  existence,  and  difference,  to  environment,  people,  and  their 
resultant,  purpose;  and  as  these  factors  vary  in  combination,  so  will 
the  designs  vary.  Now  these  factors  in  various  definite  combinations 
have  at  certain  places  and  certain  times  in  history  been  the  same  over 
some  period  of  time  and  over  some  considerable  area  :  many  gardens, 
for  instance,  have  been  constructed  in  this  way  under  more  or  less 
identical  general  conditions.  These  identical  conditions  have  produced 
a  similarity  of  expression  in  these  gardens,  which  makes  us  recognize 
them  as  a  class,  and  this  common  expression  in  its  more  notable  mani- 
festations we  call  "  historic  style."  Such  a  style  need  not  be  conscious ; 
it  may  exceptionally  arise  through  a  number  of  the  same  kind  of  people 
working  under  the  same  general  conditions  without  very  definite  knowl- 
edge of  each  other's  work  and  without  intentional  expression  of  any- 
thing but  their  individual  desires.  Some  styles  may  exist,  in  various 
degrees  of  distinctness  and  perfection,  which  are  of  little  interest  to  us 
as  designers.  Many  styles,  too,  must  have  arisen  in  the  past  and 
been  forgotten  with  the  monuments  in  which  they  were  recorded,  — 
there  was  doubtless  an  Aztec  style  of  landscape  design  and  perhaps  a 
Carthaginian  style ;  but  those  styles  which  we  call  "  historic  "  are  those 
with  which  we  are  familiar. 

A  work  of  art  which  has  style  may  be  esthetically  organized  in 
either  one  of  two  fundamentally  different  ways.  The  artist  may  de- 
sign his  work  to  express  his  own  ideas,  to  serve  his  own  uses,  to  show 
his  own  control  over  some  of  the  materials  and  forces  of  nature.  Or 
on  the  other  hand  he  may  design  his  work  to  express  to  the  beholders 
the  understanding  which  he  has  of  some  modes  of  nature's  organization, 
and  the  pleasure  which  he  finds  in  them.  In  the  first  case,  the  esthetic 
success  of  the  work  will  require  that  the  hand  and  the  will  of  man  be 
visible  in  it ;    in  the  second  case,  the  higher  art  would  be  that  which 


DratHm  by  HMUn  a.  Mfltt 


GRAVETYE  MANOR 


II 


TASTE,    IDEALS,    STTLE,    CHARACTER      31 

so  perfectly  interpreted  nature's  character  that  the  work  should  seem 
to  be  a  wonderfully  complete  and  intelligible  expression  of  nature's  self. 

In  these  designs  of  man  which  imitate  —  or  better,  interpret  — 
nature,  there  will  be  two  kinds  of  unity  sought  by  the  designer.  He 
will  seek,  as  he  does  in  his  man-made  designs,  esthetic  compositional 
harmony  of  form  and  color  and  arrangement,  but  he  will  seek  also  to 
express  his  ideal  of  a  much  more  subtle  harmony,  namely,  the  landscape 
character  which  in  large  measure  is  not  observed  directly  in  the  forms 
or  in  the  composition,  but  is  seen  only  in  the  light  of  some  knowledge 
of  the  great  natural  forces  at  work,  the  growth  of  trees,  the  wave- 
carving  of  the  beaches,  the  upheaval  of  the  hills. 

In  natural  landscape,  this  character  is  the  result  of  infinitely  greater  Interpretation 
and  more  complicated  reactions  of  forces  than  those  which  shape  the  Q^^^aeT^' 
works  of  man.  These  forces  operate  on  so  vast  a  scale  and  through 
such  great  stretches  of  time  that  the  particular  manifestations  which 
we  now  observe  are  never  the  perfect  expression  of  a  combination  of 
forces  working  all  towards  one  obvious  end.  The  river  valley  has  been 
first  upheaved  and  then  eroded ;  the  mountain  slope  has  been  forest- 
clad,  stripped  by  an  avalanche,  again  forest-clad,  and  again  perhaps 
denuded  by  fire.  In  his  own  small  work  man  may  express  his  ideal  of 
what  might  be  the  result  if  nature  deigned  to  coordinate  her  forces  for 
so  small  an  end  as  man's  esthetic  pleasure.  But  when  man  deals  with 
larger  works  of  nature,  all  he  can  do,  all  he  should  dare  attempt,  is 
humbly  to  study  the  character  and  effect  of  the  landscape  as  he  finds 
it  and  to  remove  such  things  as  he  may  which  are  incongruous  with 
this  expression  and  add  such  things  as  he  can  which  will  carry  it  to  a 
greater  completeness. 


CHAPTER   IV 

STYLES   OF   LANDSCAPE   DESIGN 

Origin  and  names  of  historic  styles  —  Categories  of  styles  —  Examples  of 
HISTORIC  styles  OF  LANDSCAPE  DESIGN  —  The  Moorlsh  Style  in  Spain  —  The 
Moghul  style  in  India  —  The  styles  of  the  Italian  Renaissance  and  Baroque 
villas  —  The  style  of  Le  Notre  —  The  Romantic  landscape  style  —  The  English 
formal  style  of  the  Tudors  —  The  English  cottage  style  —  The  New  England 
colonial  style  —  The  modern  German  formal  style  —  The  Japanese  styles  — 
The  modern  American  landscape  style  —  Study  of  styles  —  Choice  of  style. 

Origin  and  In  Studying  existing  works  of  landscape  architecture  we  find  that 

Names  of  ^       consider  in  groups  works  which  produce  a  similar  effect  on  the 

Historic  ■'  °    .    ^ .        ,  ,..,..,.  .        . 

Styles  beholder  on  account  of  a  fundamental  similarity  in  their  organization ; 

and  we  have  seen  that  the  similarity  of  organization  comes  in  the  case 
of  each  group  from  a  similarity  of  conditions  under  which  the  examples 
in  the  group  were  brought  forth,  —  conditions,  namely,  of  their  physical 
environment  and  material,  of  the  people  who  made  them  or  for  whom 
they  were  made,  and  of  the  purposes  for  which  they  were  produced. 
Although  sometimes  one  of  these  factors,  sometimes  another,  appears 
as  most  strikingly  characteristic  in  the  resultant  groups,  we  find  that 
the  various  historic  styles  of  landscape  design  which  have  been  differen- 
tiated have  taken  their  names  usually  from  the  peoples  which  originated 
them  and  the  countries  in  which  they  arose,  occasionally  from  an  in- 
dividual whose  name  was  associated  with  certain  definite  pieces  of 
work  which  were  the  first  examples  of  the  style,  and,  rarely,  from  the 
total  esthetic  effect  produced  by  the  style.  Naturally  enough,  most  of 
our  names  of  historic  styles  designate  at  once  both  the  people  and  the 
country  associated  with  their  origin ;  for  example,  we  speak  loosely 
of  an  Italian  style  of  landscape  design.  But  since  the  ideals  and  customs 
of  a  people  change  with  time,  and  since  in  different  parts  even  of  one 
country  the  natural  conditions  may  be  very  different,  if  we  intend  to 

32 


SrrLES    OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN ^ 

designate  a  style  accurately,  we  must  name  also  its  period  and  perhaps 
its  definite  location  :  we  must  say,  for  instance,  the  style  of  the  Floren- 
tine Renaissance  gardens.  Equally  definite  with  the  name  of  the  period 
and  country  —  seventeenth  century  French  style,  for  instance  —  is  the 
name  of  the  designer  or  his  client,  as  Le  Notre  or  Louis  XIV.  The  style 
of  Le  Notre  was  also  called  the  Grand  style,  that  is,  it  was  designated 
by  its  esthetic  effect  upon  the  beholder.  Another  style,  esthetically 
almost  its  antithesis,  also  bears  the  name  of  an  esthetic  effect,  the 
Romantic  landscape  style.  As  is  natural,  since  the  esthetic  effect 
varies  with  the  beholder,  these  names  are  of  themselves  less  exact,  and 
they  come  to  have  a  definite  signification  only  as  custom  sanctions  their 
use  in  relation  to  certain  recognizably  characterized  groups  of  designs. 

Several  styles  of  landscape  design  diflFerent  enough  to  bear  different  Categories 
specific  names  may  yet  be  similar  enough  in  some  respects  to  be  put  in  °J  ^^y  " 
the  same  category  in  discussion.  From  the  point  of  view  of  esthetic 
effect  upon  the  observer,  styles  have  been  grouped  into  the  two  divergent 
categories,  Classic  and  Romantic.  Any  style  might  be  considered  as 
Classic  which  was  characterized  fundamentally  by  repose,  restraint, 
refinement,  formality,  although  the  name  is  more  specifically  applied, 
as  it  is  in  architecture,  to  the  work  of  ancient  Greece  and  Rome,  which 
was  marked  by  these  characteristics.  The  word  often  connotes  also  an 
accepted  standard,  since  the  styles  of  Greece  and  Rome  were  so  long 
thus  regarded,  but  this  is  plainly  not  an  essential  meaning  of  the  word. 
In  contradistinction  to  Classic  is  the  word  Romantic,*  as  applied  to 
those  styles  which  excite  the  sentiments  and  fancy  by  variety  and  con- 
trast and  make  a  direct  and  studied  appeal  to  the  emotions,  through 
the  human  associations  aroused. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  form  and  space  relation  of  the  objects 
in  the  design,  styles  have  been  divided  into  the  two  categories  which 
have  been  the  innocent  cause  of  so  much  discussion  and  misapprehen- 
sion :  formal  and  informal.  The  reason  that  these  terms  have  occupied 
so  important  a  place  in  the  discussion  of  styles  in  landscape  design  is 
that  they  are  the  names  of  modes  of  organization  so  general  that  almost 
all  other  styles  may  be  included  under  the  one  or  the  other.  We  hear 
so  much  about  them,  not  because  they  are  such  valuable  categories,  but 
*  Cf.  the  two  kinds  of  effects,  discussed  in  Chapter  VI,  p.  77. 


34  LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

because  they  are  such  inclusive  categories.     Plainly  they  may  divide 
the  world  between  them.     A  formal  design  is  one  in  which  the  objects 
are  arranged  in  geometrical  relations,  their  forms  defining  geometric 
figures  on  plan  or  being  exactly  balanced  about  a  central  axis.     Such 
a  design  has  been  variously  called  architectural,  regular,  symmetrical, 
and  geometrical.     An  informal  design  is  one  in  which  the  objects  are 
not  arranged  in  the  way  we  have  just  stated,  that  is,  it  is  any  de- 
sign which  is  not  formal.     (Compare  Plate  30  and  Drawing  II,  opp. 
p.  30.)     Most  of  the  difficulties  in  regard  to  the  term  informal  have 
arisen  because  different  men  have  understood  it  in  different  senses. 
Some  of  the  more  ardent  disciples  of  formal  design  have  in  eflFect  con- 
sidered informal  to  be  synonymous  with  formless,   and  have  denied 
that  any  good  design  could  exist  where,  as  they  considered,  there  was  no 
consistent  organization  of  any  kind.     Others,  having  observed  that  the 
works  of  nature  are  without  geometrical  form,   have  endeavored  to 
make  their  designs  appear  natural  by  the  simple  expedient  of  allowing 
no  geometrical  forms  or  balanced  relations  to  appear.*     The  thoroughly 
unorganized  and  bad  work  produced  in  this  way  has  been  used  as  a 
reproach  to  those  who  were  doing  good  naturalistic  work,  that  is,  design 
which,  not  being  organized  to  express  man's  will,  nor  to  express  his 
esthetic  desire  for  recognizable  form  and  symmetrical  balance,  was  in- 
formal, but  was  none  the  less  composed,  depending  on  more  occult 
relations  of  balance  and  harmony  and  organized  as  an  expression  of  the 
unity  of  certain  forces  of  nature.     It  is  evident  that  the  negative  term 
informal  is  so  general  that  it  is  of  very  little  value  in  naming  a  style, 
and  should  certainly  not  be  used  as  the  designation  of  the  principle  of 
organization  of  naturalistic  design. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  fundamental  ideal  expressed  by  the 
designer,  styles  of  landscape  design  fall  into  two  classes,  those  which 
express  the  dominance  and  the  will  of  man  and  those  which  express 
the  designer's  appreciation  of  the  power  and  beauty  of  nature. f 
(Compare  Drawing  IX,  opp.  p.  78  with  Plate  21,  and  Tailpiece  on  p.  230 
with  Plate  27.)  We  have  called  the  styles  which  fall  into  the  first  of 
these  categories  humanized  and  those  which  fall  into  the  second, 
naturalistic.  Since  giving  an  object  geometrical  form  is  a  common 
*  Cf.  footnote  on  p.  45.  t  See  Chapter  III,  p.  30. 


STTLES    OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


35 


and  obvious  way  of  making  it  express  man's  will,  the  term  formal  has 
often  been  used  in  the  sense  of  man-made  or  man-dominated,  but  the 
two  terms  are  not  synonymous,  for  there  are  many  informal  designs 
which  nevertheless  are  definitely  and  obviously  humanized.  The 
arrangement  of  their  parts  will  consist  in  a  more  subtle  sequence  and 
an  occult  balance  of  interest  among  the  objects  composed,  in  pleasant 
harmonies  and  contrasts  of  the  natural  character  of  these  objects,  and 
in  studied  compositions  of  their  individual  effects  for  the  greatest 
result  in  the  effect  of  the  whole.  The  hand  of  the  designer  and  his 
artistic  achievement  may  be  recognized  as  fully  in  this  design  as  in 
man's   formally  arranged   compositions.     (See  Plate  6.) 

From  among  the  various  styles  of  landscape  design,  we  have  chosen  Examples  of 
for  discussion  in  this  chapter  several  of  the  more   clearly  defined  as   -^"'ortc 
examples.     Some  analysis  of  the  causes  which  brought  each  style  about,      ^ 
some  appreciation  of  the  particular  esthetic  effect  which  is  the  stamp  and 
the  soul  of  each  style,  should  give  us  a  clearer  idea  of  how  our  predeces- 
sors in  landscape  design  have  met  their  problems  and  what  the  essential 
considerations  arewhichwe  inour  turnmust  bear  in  mind  in  meeting  ours. 

The  Moorish  gardens  in  Spain  had  for  their  direct  prototype  the  The  Moorish 
gardens  of  Persia  and  Syria.  The  first  Moorish  gardens  in  Cordova  ^'>'^^  '" 
may  well  have  been  laid  out  by  men  who  remembered  the  gardens  of  ^'"'* 
Damascus,  and  some  of  the  fruits  and  flowers  which  to  us  are  almost 
t}-pical  of  Spain  were  introduced  from  the  East  by  the  Moorish  invaders. 
In  the  hot  and  dr>-  climate  of  southern  Spain,  the  Moors  had  no  need 
greatly  to  change  their  inherited  method  of  life;  and  their  social 
customs,  and  the  constant  wars,  little  and  great,  through  which  the 
countr}'  went,  made  it  natural  that  the  gardens  should  be  almost  in 
even,'  instance  patios  partly  or  wholly  surrounded  by  buildings, 
accessible  only  to  the  owner,  and  defended  from  the  outside  world. 
Of  the  many  gardens  which  must  have  existed  in  Cordova,  Toledo, 
Seville,  and  Granada,  few  have  remained  to  the  present  day.  Two 
notable  and  beautiful  examples  remain  essentially  unchanged  in  the 
gardens  of  the  Alhambra  and  the  Generaliffe  at  Granada.  (See  Draw- 
ing III,  opp.  p.  36.) 

Shade  and  coolness  were  the  things  which  the  climate  made  most 
desirable.     A  love  for  the  color  and  scent  of  flowers,  the  Moors  had 


36 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


brought  with  them  from  the  East.     Water,  essential  in  any  case  for 
the  growth  of  the  vegetation,  was  also  by  its  life  and  movement  and 
sparkle,  by  its  suggestion  of  coolness,  by  its  very  contrast  with  the  out- 
side world  in  a  land  of  drought,  the  most  precious  and  attractive  thing 
with  which  they  could  decorate  the  small  areas  in  which  perforce  they 
concentrated,  to  be  enjoyed  at  ease,  the  kind  of  bekuty  and  restfulness 
furnished  so  scantily  by  the  outside  world.     The  water  appeared   in 
brimming  fountain  basins,  in  long  and  narrow  pools,  in  multitudes  of 
slender  jets,  and  in  little  runnels  cut  in  the  pavements  of  the  courts  and 
even  of  the  buildings  themselves.     The  fruit  trees   and  flowers   and 
fountains  were  necessarily  made  a  part  of  an  architectural  scheme,  and 
the  style  of  the  Moorish  gardens  is  not  separable  nor  essentially  different 
except  in  material  from  the  style  of  Moorish  architecture  of  the  same 
period.     When  the  Moors  were  finally  conquered  by  the  more  virile 
but  less  beauty-loving  races  of  the  North,  their  taste  left  its  stamp  on 
the  culture  of  Spain,  and  the  conquering  Spaniard  in  Mexico  and  Cali- 
fornia left  in  turn  monuments  of  his  taste  and  customs,  still  in  a  similar 
climate,  which  serve  as  examples  in  these  places  to  our  civilization  of  the 
present  day. 
The  Moghul  In  the  same  way  that  the  Arabs,  having  had  previously  no  particular 

Style  in  garden  art  of  their  own,  prized  and  appropriated  the  garden  design  of 

^"'^*''  the  Persians  and  carried  it  to  a  new  perfection  in  Spain,  the  Mongolian 

invaders  of  Persia  appropriated  the  same  art  and  carried  it  later  with 
the  founding  of  the  Moghul  dynasty  in  India  to  the  greatest  mag- 
nificence which  it  has  seen.  Thus  the  gardens  of  the  Alhambra  and 
those  of  the  Taj  Mahal  (see  Plate  l)  have  a  readily  traceable  common 
ancestry. 

The  design  of  the  Moghul  gardens  was  based,  as  the  design  of  any 
garden  in  a  hot  dry  climate  must  be  based,  primarily  on  the  value  of 
water  and  shade  and  flowers  and  fruit.  The  arrangement  of  these 
was  deeply  influenced  — both  in  the  general  division  of  the  garden  and 
in  such  things  as  the  grouping  of  the  trees  and  the  number  of  waterfalls 
—  by  the  Mohammedan  symbolism  which  became  gradually  enriched 
from  the  traditions  of  the  symbol-loving  Hindus.*  The  Moghuls  were 
*  Cf.  the  "  marriage  of  the  trees  "  and  other  symbolism  alluded  to  in  various  chap- 
ters in  C.  M.  Villiers  Stuart's  Gardens  of  the  Great  Mughals,  1913.      (See  References.) 


Dnirlmt  Dy  Benjamin  Y   MorrUoa 


GARDEN  POOL,  THE  GENERALIFFE 


m 


STTLES     OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 37 

'     '  -I-  ■     — _...-■       I  -  ,.  ,.r-.  ,  J 

lovers  of  scenery  and  laid  great  emphasis  on  choice  of  site,  a  hillside 
spring  being  the  ideal  starting  point  of  a  garden.  The  gardens  were 
inclosed,  not  in  this  case  so  much  for  the  sake  of  defense  as  for  privacy, 
repose,  magnificence,  and  definite  formality.  The  whole  scheme  of 
buildings  and  gardens  was  designed  as  one.  The  scheme  was  made  to 
be  lived  in  and  often  different  portions  were  arranged  for  enjoyment 
at  different  times  of  day.  We  read  how  the  Emperor  moved  from  the 
water-sprayed  central  pavilion,  cool  even  at  noon,  to  the  deep  afternoon 
shade  of  a  grove  of  planes,  and  again  in  the  evening  walked  in  the 
"moonlight  court"  full  of  the  rich  perfumes  of  gleaming  white  flowers. 
The  gardens  were  often  on  a  scale  much  greater  than  any  of  their  proto- 
types in  Persia,  greater  than  the  Italian  villas  of  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries  with  which  they  were  contemporary,  or  indeed 
greater  than  any  of  the  gardens  with  which  we  in  modern  times  are 
familiar  except  the  more  magnificent  designs  of  the  age  of  Louis  XIV. 

These  gardens  came  into  being  in  one  of  two  ways  :  either  they  sur- 
rounded the  palace  or  temporary  dwelling  of  the  owner,  or  they  were 
the  result  of  the  combination  of  two  notable  customs  of  the  Moghuls, 
garden  making  and  tomb  building.  It  was  common  for  any  prince  or 
noble  to  have  constructed  for  himself  a  pleasure  building  in  the  midst 
of  a  garden  and  to  use  this  for  his  own  recreation  and  that  of  his  friends 
during  his  lifetime,  and  for  a  tomb  and  a  permanent  memorial  after  his 
death.  There  thus  grew  up  under  the  Moghul  dominion  in  India  a 
great  number  of  these  gardens,  some  of  which  have  remained  to  the 
present  day  so  that  their  design  may  be  appreciated,  and  still  more  are 
in  ruins  with  only  traces  of  their  plan.  In  the  more  broken  and  hilly 
country,  the  design  fitted  itself  to  the  topography  and  therefore  varied 
from  place  to  place,  although  a  certain  consistency  of  scheme  is  trace- 
able in  such  gardens  as  have  come  down  to  us.  In  these  the  main  build- 
ing was  either  at  the  bottom  or  the  top  of  the  terracing.  As  in  the 
Moghul  gardens  of  Kashmir,  of  which  the  Nishat  Bagh  is  an  existing 
example,  advantage  was  taken  of  the  change  of  elevation  to  secure  by  a 
succession  of  terraces  a  combination  of  inclosure  with  an  opportunity 
for  distant  view.  In  the  treatment  of  water  any  change  of  elevation 
was  seized  upon  to  give  the  additional  life  and  splashing  of  cascades 
and   water-chutes.      In   the   great   plains   country   around   Agra   and 


38  LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

Delhi,  where  less  inspiration  could  be  got  from  the  sites,  the  designs 
were  more  nearly  alike.  In  general  the  garden  was  inclosed  in  a 
rectangular  form  by  high  walls,  its  corners  strengthened  by  towers. 
In  the  middle  of  each  wall  was  often  a  great  entrance  gate.  The 
principal  building,  commonly  the  pleasure  house,  stood  in  the  midst 
of  the  garden,  often  surrounded  by  a  canal  and  with  four  long  water 
basins  extending  in  a  cross  from  the  central  pavilion  and  terminating 
against  four  features  in  the  surrounding  walls,  —  entrances  or  pavilions. 
The  four  rectangular  plots  thus  formed  between  the  water  courses  and 
the  walls  were  further  divided  formally,  and  were  sometimes  planted  in 
bold  masses  to  brilliant  flowers,  sometimes  set  out  with  trees  of  different 
sorts.  Though  the  design  was  simple  and  rigidly  formal,  much  pains 
was  apparently  taken  in  the  original  planting  of  the  gardens  to  avoid 
monotony,  the  different  subdivisions  often  being  given  a  different 
character  by  being  devoted  to  the  culture  of  some  particular  fruit  tree 
or  shade  tree  or  flower.  Often  the  principal  flower  display  was  confined 
to  long  beds  running  parallel  with  the  paths  which  bordered  the  long 
water-basins,  while  the  tree  planting  formed  avenues  paralleling  the 
surrounding  walls,  or  in  the  larger  schemes  formed  considerable  groves 
in  which  the  tents  of  some  of  the  followers  of  the  monarch  might  be 
pitched  when  he  visited  the  garden  on  a  royal  progress.  Not  much  use 
could  be  made  in  these  flat  gardens  of  any  form  of  cascade,  nor  apparently 
was  much  attention  devoted  to  large  fountains.  Rather,  as  in  the 
Moorish  gardens  in  Spain,  there  were  a  multitude  of  small  jets  playing 
in  the  midst  of  the  canals  or  pools  or  perhaps  arching  over  from  the 
stone  coping  into  the  pool.  To  give  an  effect  of  greater  depth  to  the 
basins,  which  were  usually  shallow,  they  were  often  paved  with  blue  tiles 
and  further  were  diversified  with  the  many-colored  tiles  which  formed 
an  important  part  of  the  decoration  of  the  garden  buildings.  The 
copings  of  the  pools,  often  beautifully  carved,  were  so  cut  that  the 
water  could  be  held  brimming  to  their  upper  surface,  still  below  the 
level  of  the  raised  paths,  thus  giving  both  the  greatest  beauty  of 
reflection  and  the  practical  advantage  of  greater  ease  of  the  use  of  the 
water  throughout  the  gardens  for  irrigation.  In  this  these  gardens 
differed  from  those  of  Italy,  —  that  though  in  both  countries  the 
use  of  the  water  from  the  point  of  view  of  beauty  and  enjoyment  was 


STYLES     OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


39 


thoroughly  worked  out,  in  India  its  use  in  irrigation  was  a  practical 
requirement  as  well,  without  which  the  garden  could  not  have  existed. 

Of  these  tomb  gardens  of  the  plains  the  Taj  Mahal  at  Agra,  which 
by  great  good  fortune  has  come  down  to  our  time  in  much  of  its  former 
glory,  is  the  finest  example.  In  the  Taj,  Persian  and  Hindu  craftsmen 
vied  with  each  other  in  the  decoration  of  a  still  essentially  Persian  archi- 
tectural conception.  Although  the  relation  of  the  principal  building 
to  the  four-parted  garden  is  not  typical,  since  the  garden  lies  to  one 
side  of  it,  it  thus  takes  advantage  of  a  natural  opportunity,  standing 
with  its  terrace  on  the  bank  of  the  river  Jumna  and  so  dominating  a 
sweeping  view  along  the  river  and  into  the  level  country  beyond. 
Arranged  as  it  is,  the  garden  gives  a  fitting  setting  for  the  central 
building,  that  miracle  of  architectural  beauty  the  tomb  of  Mumtaz 
Mahal,  the  wife  of  Shah  Jahan. 

The  Italian  Renaissance  buildings  and  gardens  —  many  of  which  are   The  Styles  of 

preserv'ed  to  us  as  examples  of  this  style  at  once  so  historically  important  '^''  ■'^'?'"'« 

J  J  1  1  1  1.1.,,  Renaissance 

and  so  adaptable  to  our  present  needs  —  were  made  by  the  mdependent  and  Baroque 

and  turbulent  nobles  of  the  countr}%  proud,  ostentatious,  competitive,    f'Mas 

jealous  of  each  other's   success,   but   esthetically  appreciative,   often 

excellent  artists  in  their  own  right,  and  in  any  case  having  command 

through  riches  or  feudal  power  of  the  labor  of  great  numbers  of  artisans 

and  of  the  skill  of  a  group  of  artists  of  greater  attainment  than  the 

world  has  since  seen.     Practically  throughout  Italy,  the  plains  and 

valleys  are  unpleasantly  hot  in  summer  and  often  unhealthful,  while 

the  steep-sided  hills,  even  though  they  rise  but  a  few  hundred  feet,  are 

breezy  and  cool,  and  the  outlying  uplands  of  the  higher  country  are  well- 

watered.     It  was  natural  therefore  that  the  villas  of  the  nobles  should 

be  placed  on  these  hills,  facing  a  broad  view  and  a  cooling  wind,  and 

taking  fullest  advantage  of  the  water  which  increased  the  luxuriance 

of  the  gardens  and  formed  the  chief  feature  of  their  decoration.     The 

mode  of  life  of  these  Italian  princes  was  not  ver>^  different  from  that  of 

the  nobles  of  ancient  Rome,  to  whom  they  were  often  so  proud  to  trace 

their  ancestry-.     Traditions  and  records  of  the  old  Roman  villas,  indeed 

in  some  cases  extensive  remains  of  their  former  magnificence,  served 

as  inspiration  for  new  work,  as  was  the  case  in  architecture  and  the 

other  arts  in  the  period  of  the  Renaissance.     Many  statues  and  sculp- 


40 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

tural  decorations  preserved  from  classical  antiquity  could  actually  be 
incorporated  in  the  Renaissance  designs.  The  great  artists  of  the  time 
were  architects,  sculptors,  painters,  landscape  designers,  as  the  occasion 
served.  The  villa  was  one  design,  including  buildings  and  gardens, 
and  so  the  evolution  of  style  of  the  whole  rise  and  flowering  of  the  Italian 
Renaissance  is  reflected  in  its  gardens  just  as  it  is  in  its  architecture 
and  painting.  There  were  villas  of  importance  and  beauty  at  least 
as  early  as  the  time  of  Boccaccio  * ;  of  those  which  have  come  down  to 
our  time,  sufficiently  intact  to  give  us  any  idea  of  their  original  state, 
part  of  the  Villa  Palmieri,  the  Villa  Poggio  a  Cajano,  Villa  Castello, 
and  Villa  Petraia,  in  the  vicinity  of  Florence,  are  among  the  earliest. 
In  all  these  cases,  there  is  a  certain  simplicity  and  solidity  in  the  mass  of 
the  buildings,  still  close  to  their  prototype  of  the  fortress  castle,  or 
indeed  often  containing  portions  of  these  older  buildings  or  being 
altered  from  them  by  the  cutting  of  windows  and  doors  in  the  old  fortress 
walls.  The  building  dominates  a  main  terrace,  simple  in  form  and 
simply  divided,  and  such  other  terraces  and  decorative  units  as  there 
may  have  been  were  apparently  related  to  the  building  in  some  direct 
and  obvious  mass  relation  motived  by  the  ground  rather  than  in  any 
elaborate  axial  arrangement  of  the  general  scheme.  The  water  appears 
in  simple  and  quiet  pools  or  in  fountains  notable  for  the  excellence  of 
their  sculpture  rather  than  for  the  play  of  fancy  in  handling  the  water. 
In  the  Villa  Madama  at  Rome,  also  of  an  early  date,  we  see  evidences 
of  transition  to  a  general  scheme  in  which  the  separate  parts  were  sub- 
ordinate to  the  unity  of  the  whole. 

The  later  villas,  of  the  sixteenth  century,  of  which  some  of  the  finest 
examples  are  the  Villa  Lante  at  Bagnaia  (see  Plate  29  and  also  19), 
the  Villa  d'  Este  at  Tivoli,  the  upper  terrace  at  the  Villa  Farnese  at 
Caprarola,  and  the  Villa  Medici  at  Rome,  are  more  evidently  the  con- 
scious application  of  architectural  design  to  the  outdoor  setting  of  the 
palace.  The  various  terraces  and  areas  into  which  the  scheme  is  divided 
are  definitely  related  to  each  other  as  parts  of  a  formal  design,  and  im- 
portant points  in  the  design  —  terminations  of  axes  and  vistas  or  centers 
of  symmetry  —  are  recognized  architecturally  with  statues  or  fountains 

*  The  Introduction  to  the  Third  Day  of  the  Decameron  describes  the  garden  identi- 
fied as  that  of  the  present  Villa  Palmieri  near  Florence. 


STYLES    OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 41 

or  niches  or  other  decorative  treatment  as  the  case  may  be.  (See 
Drawing  I,  opp.  p.  26,  and  Tailpiece  on  p.  23.)  The  treatment  of 
water  is  carried  to  a  great  degree  of  ingenious  and  fanciful  elaboration  : 
water-ramps,  water  tables,  cascades,  fountains,  and  pools  of  all  kinds 
intenveave  their  sparkle  and  reflection  with  the  masses  of  sun  and  shade 
into  which  the  schemes  are  designed  to  fall. 

In  the  villas  built  in  the  late  sixteenth  and  the  seventeenth  centuries, 
the  Baroque  style  was  carried  to  at  least  as  great  extremes  as  it  was  in 
architecture,  because  the  less  necessity  for  any  recognition  of  struc- 
tural architectural  requirements  in  garden  design  and  the  greater  legiti- 
mate chance  for  an  unrestricted  play  of  fancy  gave  an  exceptional 
opportunity  to  the  exuberant  designers  of  those  times.  Among  the 
examples  of  work  done  in  this  period  are  the  Villa  Aldobrandini  at 
Frascati,  Isola  Bella,  WWa.  Giovio  at  Como,  and  the  Villa  Garzoni 
(Collodi).  (See  Drawing  IV,  opp.  p.  40.)  In  these  designs,  a  leading 
motive  in  the  architecture  seems  to  be  to  produce  striking  and  pictur- 
esque forms,  violent  contrasts  of  detail  and  flat  surface,  —  even  at  the 
sacrifice  of  delicacy  and  justness  of  individual  form,  - —  rather  than  to 
recognize  the  use  and  structural  lines  of  the  buildings ;  and  in  the 
smaller  garden  structures,  the  gates  and  steps  and  niches,  this  treat- 
ment of  architectural  forms  as  stage  scenery  to  be  looked  at  rather  than 
anything  to  be  used  reaches  its  extreme.  In  some  cases  this  treatment 
of  each  scene  for  itself  alone  is  admirable ;  in  other  cases  the  illusion  is 
so  transparent  that  the  attention  is  drawn  rather  to  the  incongruity  of 
the  scene  with  its  surroundings  than  to  the  artistic  completeness  of  the 
scene  within  itself.* 

The  period  of  the  development  of  the  Italian  Renaissance  and 
Baroque  gardens  covers  roughly  three  centuries.  During  all  this 
period,  though  men's  ideas  as  to  beauty  in  decoration  changed,  men's 
modes  of  living  continued  much  the  same,  and  from  these  and 
from  the  climate  and  vegetation  have  come  essential  characteristics 
which  are  found  in  nearly  all  the  villas  whether  early  or  late.  These 
are  noticeably  a  feeling  for  the  preciousness  of  water,  expressed  in  the 
many  ingenious  means  for  displaying  all  its  beauties ;  a  feeling  for  the 
peace  and  relief  of  shade  in  a  brilliant  and  sunny  climate,  and  much 

*  Cf.  Chapter  VII,  p.  117,  Illusions. 


42     LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

skill  in  the  use  of  shaded  and  sunny  areas  enhancing  each  other;  a 
feeling  for  the  inspiration  of  the  open,  distant  view,  and  for  the  increasing 
of  its  effect  by  a  foreground  of  shaded  arcade  or  bosquet ;  a  feeling  for 
the  unity  of  the  whole  villa  and  its  contrast  with  the  surrounding 
country,  evinced  by  the  definite  wall  between  the  gardens  and  the 
surrounding  vineyards  below,  by  the  sharp  contrast  of  the  outside 
forest  with  the  architectural  terrace  which  it  backs  and  enframes ;  a 
very  notable  feeling  for  formal  design  in  outdoor  objects,  and  with  it 
the  artistic  sense  not  to  carry  schematic  regularity  of  plan  further  than 
it  is  actually  effective  in  the  design,  a  mistake  which  besets  us  modern 
designers  of  the  T-square  and  triangle. 

It  so  happens  that  in  the  native  vegetation  of  Italy  there  are  a 
number  of  trees  that  are  singularly  well  adapted  to  take  their  place  in  a 
formal  design  :  the  cypress,  because  of  its  symmetrical  shape  and  heavi- 
ness and  density  of  foliage,  and  the  stone  pine  and  the  ilex  for  their 
equally  definite  and  dense  texture  and  for  their  striking  character. 
(See  again  Drawing  I,  and  also  Drawing  XIV,  opp.  p.  1 12.)  Doubtless 
the  choice  of  the  designs  was  somewhat  motived  by  the  properties  of 
these  materials,  but  it  is  undeniable  that  the  vegetation  and  the  archi- 
tecture of  the  Italian  gardens  form  a  complete  and  esthetically  sufficient 
whole  to  a  degree  that  can  be  matched  in  few  other  styles. 
The  Style  of  When  Le  Notre  undertook  the  design  of  Versailles,  after  his  successes 

Le  Notre  ^t  Vaux  and  Chantilly,  the  social  conditions  of  France  were  in  one 

respect  similar  to  those  in  Italy  which  we  have  just  discussed.  The 
great  nobles,  each  with  his  own  estate  and  with  command  of  great 
resources,  vied  with  each  other  in  magnificence  and  display ;  but  where 
Italy  was  broken  into  a  multitude  of  warring  states,  France  was  already 
a  great  nation ;  and  it  was  the  paramount  magnificence  of  the  King  of 
France  that  Le  Notre  was  called  upon  to  express.  In  previous  times  the 
grounds  about  the  French  chateaux  had  been  self-contained  units  as 
they  were  in  Italy,  for  similar  reasons ;  but  at  this  time  there  was  no 
necessity  for  inclosure  for  defense.  Further,  in  the  damp  climate  of 
France  great  areas  of  ground  might  be  cultivated  or  grown  to  wood 
without  prohibitive  cost,  and  in  the  comparatively  flat  land  in  which 
most  of  the  great  gardens  were  situated,  there  was  no  better  way  of 
expressing  grandeur  than  by  the  effect  of  almost  unlimited  extent.  ^  (See 


STTLES    OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


43 


Drawing  IX,  opp.  p.  78.)  There  had  been  great  open  parterres  before 
the  days  of  Le  Notre,  there  had  been  great  gardens  consisting  of  different 
treatments  of  rectangular  units  more  or  less  intervisible,  and  Le  Notre 
doubtless  felt  the  barrenness  of  one  and  the  confusion  of  the  other. 
The  method  which  he  adopted  to  produce  the  desired  effect  of  great 
extent  was  that  of  the  allee  through  a  wood,  an  arrangement  not  new 
to  be  sure,  but  never  constructed  before  on  so  vast  a  scale.  His  system 
of  allees  at  Versailles  has  the  additional  advantages  of  connecting  various 
points  of  interest  throughout  the  wood,  giving  a  succession  of  different 
vistas  as  a  visitor  passes  from  one  axially-placed  fountain  to  another, 
and  separating  the  different  bosquets,  each  of  which  is  thus  allowed  to 
be  treated  in  a  distinctive  way.  It  is  hard  to  imagine  that  any  other 
scheme  could  have  produced  upon  a  flat  topography  so  successful  a 
combination  of  a  multitude  of  subordinate  different  details  and  an 
enormous  simplicity  and  spaciousness  of  general  effect. 

Next  the  garden  facade  of  the  chateau  of  Versailles,  the  great  parterre 
serves  as  a  setting  for  the  building,  a  place  for  the  display  in  open  sun- 
light of  the  various  decorative  designs  in  bright-colored  flowers,  in 
which  the  people  of  the  time  were  so  much  interested,  and  as  a  place 
in  which  might  congregate  the  crowds  of  gay  courtiers,  who  filled  the 
gardens  on  state  occasions  and  without  whom  these  great  open  spaces 
were  always  incomplete. 

The  many  different  sculptors  who  designed  the  carved  vases  of  the 
terraces,  the  cast  bronze  and  marble  statues  of  the  pools  and  fountains, 
the  busts  and  pedestals  which  adorn  and  define  the  allees,  produced 
work  which  was  in  almost  every  instance  excellent  of  its  kind  and  appro- 
priate to  its  place,  and  which  goes  far  to  give  to  the  whole  scheme  an 
air  of  lavish  expenditure  but  restrained  and  refined  taste  which  is  no 
small  part  of  the  total  effect.     (See  Drawing  V,  opp.  p.  44.) 

Even  with  the  great  resources  at  the  command  of  Louis  XIV,  it 
was  impossible  to  keep  a  constant  supply  of  running  water  for  the 
fountains,  particularly  as  the  more  important  fountains,  being  in  scale 
with  the  rest  of  the  grandiose  design,  are  in  themselves  very  large  and 
discharge  an  enormous  amount  of  water.  Moreover  the  land  was 
essentially  flat,  and  any  display  of  water  in  such  form  as  cascades  was 
therefore   particularly   difficult.     The   arrangements   of  water   which 


44 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

Le  Notre  used  most  effectively  at  Versailles  were  the  broad  water 
mirrors  of  the  upper  terrace,  the  mile-long  canal  decorating  the  great 
axial  vista,  and  permitting  gay  barges  to  be  rowed  about,  and  the 
separate  fountain  basins  which,  though  they  were  more  decorative 
when  the  water  was  playing,  were  still  interesting  when  it  was  not. 

In  France  there  is  no  long-lived  tree  of  a  distinctive  shape  like  the 
cypress,  nor  many  trees  of  possible  common  use  with  so  noticeable  a 
character  as  the  stone  pine  or  ilex  of  Italy.  In  Le  Notre's  designs,  the 
larger  trees  were  used  practically  not  at  all  as  units  in  the  design  as 
the  Italians  sometimes  used  their  cypresses,  but  rather  as  a  canopy  of 
shade,  a  mass  of  green,  bounding  the  parterres  and  overarching  the 
allees.  Of  smaller  trees,  like  the  bay  and  the  orange  in  tubs,  as  in 
many  Italian  schemes,  there  was  no  lack  (see  Drawing  X,  opp.  p.  80), 
and  the  great  orangery  at  Versailles  thus  rendered  necessary  found 
convenient  location  under  the  south  wing  of  the  great  terrace  to  which 
its  arched  entrances  gave  interest  and  architectural  completeness. 

Le  Notre  was  called  upon  through  nearly  fifty  years  of  professional 
activity  to  design  and  remodel  a  large  number  of  gardens  in  France,  — 
Vaux,  Chantilly,  St.  Germain,  Fontainebleau,  St.  Cloud  and  many 
which  no  longer  remain,  —  and  in  other  parts  of  Europe  as  well.  He 
showed  unusual  ability  in  fitting  his  work  to  the  site  and  in  producing 
recognizably  different  effects  in  different  designs,  but  the  main  con- 
ception on  which  his  work  was  based  was,  throughout,  the  same  as 
that  which  was  manifested  at  Versailles,  —  a  thorough  appreciation 
of  the  grandeur  which  comes  through  sheer  size,  and  ability  to  com- 
bine this  effect  with  much  local  interest  of  detail,  but  also  the  courage  to 
produce  this  effect  even  at  the  cost  of  some  barrenness  of  extent  of 
parterre  and  interminable  stretch  of  vista. 

All  over  Europe,  too,  the  Grand  style  found  ready  imitators  ;  and  in 
less  skillful  hands  than  Le  Notre's,  formality  on  too  small  a  scale  became 
stiffness,  straight  allees  on  rolling  topography  were  deprived  of  any  mean- 
ing in  design,  sun-smitten  parterres  overpowered  the  buildings  which 
faced  upon  them,  or  served  as  exhibitions  of  labored  monstrosities. of  car- 
pet bedding,  or  were  intersected  by  enormously  wide  paths  where  there 
were  never  great  enough  crowds  to  give  them  sufficient  reason  for  being. 

The  Grand  style  was  taken  over  also  into  the  field  of  city  planning, 


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STTLES     OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN  45 

and  the  wide,  straight,  tree-planted  avenues,  the  formal  vistas,  the  star- 
shaped  street-intersections,  which  came  to  their  greatest  use  in  the  work 
of  Haussmann,  certainly  trace  much  of  their  inspiration  to  the  style 
of  Le  Notre. 

In  England,  the  Grand  style  appealed  especially  to  those  of  the  The  Romantic 
great  land  owners  who  were  prominent  in  public  life,  familiar  with  the  J^^^dscape 
work  in  France,  or  employing  French-trained  gardeners,  and  desirous  of 
themselves  emulating  this  magnificence  and  ostentation.  Some  people 
of  smaller  means  and  more  conservative  tastes  retained  their  gardens 
of  the  Tudor  style,  but  many  of  the  great  estates  were  redesigned  and 
much  good  work  of  an  earlier  time  was  destroyed  to  produce  second- 
rate  adaptations  of  the  dignity  of  Versailles.  But  the  very  class  of 
people  who  were  so  eager  to  run  after  the  novelties  offered  by  Italy  and 
France  were  those  who  first  tired  of  them.  There  was  now  gathering 
force  throughout  Europe  the  impatience  of  formalism  and  restriction 
and  artificiality,  which  manifested  itself  early  in  literature  in  such 
diverse  writings  as  those  of  Addison  and  Pope  and  later  Thompson  in 
England,  and  of  Klopstock  in  Germany.  In  relation  to  landscape 
appreciation  the  first  efi"ect  of  this  great  general  movement  seems  to 
have  been  an  impatience  of  formal  shapes  and  definite  boundaries,  and 
a  groping  appreciation  that  in  the  forms  of  Nature  there  was  a  freedom 
and  inspiration  that  the  man-imposed  forms  lacked.  But  Kent  and 
the  following  landscape  designers  did  not  turn  whole-heartedly  to  Nature 
herself  for  inspiration.  Rather  they  studied  the  work  of  the  few  land- 
scape painters  that  had  then  arisen,  notably  the  work  of  Claude  Lor- 
rain,  and  endeavored  to  impose  on  their  landscape  designs  the  rules  of 
a  related  but  essentially  different  art.  The  reaction  against  formalism 
also  had  a  simpler  manifestation.  Tired  of  geometrical  shapes,  the 
landscape  gardeners  introduced  shapes  which  were  not  organized  geomet- 
rically but  which  were  unfortunately  not  organized  in  any  other  way, 
and  so  substituted,  for  the  existing  formal  gardens,  schemes  which  were 
not  worthy  to  be  called  designs  at  all,  since  they  expressed  little  more 
than  the  wayward  fancy  of  those  who  perpetrated  them.*     This  work, 

*  Cf .  Repton's  strictures  on  the  "slovenly  carelessness"  of  the  reactionaries 
from  formalism  in  Sketches  and  Hints  on  Landscape  Gardening,  1794,  Chapter  VI, 
Of  the  Ancient  Style  of  Gardening,  —  especially  p.  44. 


46  LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

lacking  the  formal  Inspiration  of  the  previous  style  and  lacking  also 
any  sufficient  inspiration  of  its  own,  soon  palled  even  upon  those  who 
had  first  greeted  It  with  enthusiasm.  Novelty  was  secured  by  the 
Introduction  of  Chinese  pagodas  and  other  oriental  details  to  which 
the  accounts  of  visitors  to  the  East  had  turned  the  public  attention,  and 
by  the  fanciful  buildings  of  the  ferme  ornee.  (For  a  later  French  example, 
see  Drawing  XII,  opp.  p.  84.)  And  designers  found  again  In  the  litera- 
ture of  the  time  a  new  impetus  to  an  ideal  which  landscape  design  might 
strive  to  express. 

In  France,  the  Romantic  movement  had  attained  full  expression 
in  the  works  of  J.  J.  Rousseau,  and  people,  already  familiar  in  literature 
with  the  conscious  cultivation  of  emotions,  were  turning  to  Nature  for 
some  indefinable  primal  excellence  not  found  in  the  works  of  man.  The 
"jardin  anglais,''  imported  eagerly  as  a  novelty  and  as  a  protest  against 
formalism,  acquired  a  new  significance  by  the  introduction  of  objects 
and  the  arrangement  of  scenes  each  with  the  express  purpose  of  arousing 
a  certain  emotion  in  Its  observers.  The  particular  phase  of  the  "land- 
scape school"  thus  accentuated  spread  rapidly  on  the  continent  and  in 
England  where  it  had  had  early  beginnings  In  such  a  garden  as  Stowe.* 
This  may  well  be  called  the  Romantic  landscape  style.  (See  Plates  2 
and  3.)  Its  designers  seized  upon  and  increased  to  the  best  of  their 
abilities  the  natural  characters  which  were  at  hand  and  were  capable 
of  producing  such  emotions  as  grandeur  or  desolation  or  melancholy ; 
but  in  the  great  majority  of  cases  the  natural  features  within  the 
limits  of  their  designs  were  not  capable  of  producing  in  their  hands  the 
striking  emotional  effects  which  they  sought,  and  they  had  recourse 
to  all  sorts  of  expedients,  which  through  assoclatlonal  appeal  —  usually 
through  some  human  interest  —  were  supposed  to  arouse  the  emotions 
desired.  Weeping  willows  added  their  sentiment  to  the  scene.  Dead 
trees  were  set  up,  perhaps  to  Increase  the  effect  of  wild  naturalness  as 
well  as  to  stimulate  a  feeling  of  melancholy  in  their  decay.  Artificial 
ruins  were  constructed  for  the  sake  of  a  romantic  human  interest; 
even  tombs  of  Imaginary  heroes  or  heroines  were  built,  and  appeals 
were  made  even  more  simply  to  the  pleasures  of  the  imagination  by 

*  See  Stowe :   a  Description  of  the  Magnificent  House  and  Gardens,  with  illustra- 
tions, of  which  the  first  edition  appeared  in  1744. 


STTLES     OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


47 


setting  up  inscriptions  to  different  deities  in  different  spots,  and  quota- 
tions from  the  works  of  various  authors  which  were  supposed  to  be  in 
accordance  with  the  scenes  in  which  they  were  placed.*  In  England 
these  excesses  soon  wore  themselves  outf  and  a  more  rational  landscape 
style  took  its  place  in  the  work  of  Repton,J  as  it  did  in  Germany  in 
the  work  of  Sckell  and  Puckler-Muskau.§  (See  Plate  21.)  In 
Germany,  however,  the  Romantic  landscape  style  came  perhaps  to  its 
worst  and  most  heavy-handed  extreme.  Some  designs,  as  for  instance, 
Wilhelmshohe,  near  Cassel,  are  indisputably  successful  in  producing 
an  emotional  effect,  but  whether  this  effect  will  be  interest  and  excite- 
ment or  sheer  horror  will  depend  on  the  sensitiveness  of  the  observer. 

When  Henry  VIII  dispossessed  the  monks  from  their  holdings  in  The  English 
England,  the  new  owners  of  the  lands  built  houses  and  in  many  cases  ^^''"'^^  %^^ 
laid  out  gardens  in  accordance  with  the  importance  and  state  which 
they  meant  to  keep  up.  There  was  a  sudden  and  considerable  increase 
in  interest  in  the  arrangement  of  landed  estates.  For  a  time  at  least 
there  was  little  seeking  outside  of  England  for  a  new  style  of  garden 
building ;  the  work  was  done  in  accordance  with  the  habits  and  taste 
of  the  owners,  and  with  the  materials  of  plant  and  stone  that  were 
found  at  hand.  The  soil  of  England  is  fertile,  the  climate  moist  and 
temperate,  the  sun  more  frequently  hidden  behind  clouds  or  veiled  in 
haze  than  shining  with  a  brilliancy  to  make  outdoor  life  unpleasant 

*  The  inscriptions  so  used  in  M.  de  Girardin's  estate,  which  he  designed  him- 
self may  be  found  in  the  Promenade  ou  Itiniraire  des  Jardins  d' Ermenonville,  with 
illustrations  by  Alengot,  1788.  See  also  the  illustrations  of  Laborde's  estate,  Mere- 
ville,  in  his  Descriptions  des  Nouveaux  Jardins  de  France,  1808  — ,  plates  44-57. 

t  Cf.  the  work  of  Whately,  Observations  on  Modern  Gardening,  first  published  1770. 
(See  References.) 

J  "  I  do  not  profess  to  follow  either  Le  Notre  or  Brown,  but  selecting  beauties 
from  the  style  of  each,  to  adopt  so  much  of  the  grandeur  of  the  former  as  may  accord 
with  a  palace,  and  so  much  of  the  grace  of  the  latter  as  may  call  forth  the  charms  of 
natural  landscape.  Each  has  its  proper  situation  ;  and  good  taste  will  make  fashion 
subservient  to  good  sense." 

Repton,  Theory  and  Practice  of  Landscape  Gardening,  1805,  p.  125.  In  Chapter 
X,  Ancient  and  Modern  Gardening.     (See    References.) 

§  Repton,  Sckell,  and  Piickler-Muskau  are  important  not  only  as  designers  but 
because  of  the  considerable  writings  in  which  they  left  a  record  of  their  opinions. 


48 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

except  in  the  shade.  The  people,  even  the  nobles,  who  built  these 
gardens,  were  lovers  of  the  outdoors  and  had  a  great  deal  of  homely 
common-sense  knowledge  of  the  processes  of  agriculture  and  gardening. 
The  laborers  who  actually  did  the  work  of  construction  and  maintenance 
had  been  for  generations  on  the  same  land.  They  were  slow,  conserva- 
tive, and  trained  in  definite  and  practical  ways  of  doing  their  work. 
The  designs  of  these  estates  were  usually  the  work  of  the  owners,  helped 
it  may  be  by  some  one  of  more  trained  taste,  or  realizing  on  their  own 
land  some  memory  of  designs  which  they  had  seen  in  France  and  Italy, 
but  in  any  case  adapting  their  means  to  their  ends  with  a  very  practical 
recognition  of  the  influence  of  local  material  and  individual  use. 
Decorative  flower  beds  they  doubtless  had  in  early  days,  and  flowers 
against  the  walls  of  the  houses  and  in  protected  places,  grown  for  their 
sweet  scent  and  for  their  bright  colors  in  a  dull  atmosphere  where 
bright  color  is  particularly  to  be  desired,  and  where  the  moisture  is 
favorable  to  their  luxuriant  growth.  The  garden  of  sweet  herbs,  the 
garden  of  simples,  was  as  often  as  not  a  part  of  the  same  scheme  as  the 
garden  of  flowers.  The  smooth  texture  of  velvety  turf  with  the  shade 
of  great  free-standing  trees  gave  beauty  and  dignity  to  their  grass 
terraces  and  to  the  level  expanses  of  bowling-greens  and  lawns  for 
archery.  There  were  pleached  arbors  and  alleys  for  shady  walks  and 
for  outdoor  resting-places.  The  same  workmanlike  but  fanciful  use  of 
the  materials  of  stone  and  brick  which  give  the  buildings  of  the  period 
much  of  their  charm  appeared  also  in  the  walls,  steps,  and  balustrades 
of  the  gardens  as,  for  instance,  at  Montacute  House.  Water  in  pools 
was  used  sometimes  purely  for  decoration  but  more  often  served  also  the 
practical  purpose  of  a  fish  pond.  An  old  device  was  still  common,  the 
mount,  whence  a  man  might  look  not  only  over  his  own  inclosed  gar- 
dens but  out  across  the  countryside.  The  grounds  were  arranged  for 
outdoor  living  and  active  use,  and  their  designers  drew  no  hard  and  fast 
line  between  such  areas  as  might  be  considered  as  entirely  decorative 
and  such  as  were  in  part  at  least  devoted  to  economic  purposes.  The 
separate  areas  immediately  about  the  dwelling  were  for  the  most  part 
formal,  but  the  garden  with  its  walks  and  hedges,  the  terrace  with  its 
curious  knots  of  flowers,  were  designed  each  for  itself,  and  there  was 
little  attempt  at  any  relation  of  these  areas  in  a  general  formal  scheme 


STTLES     OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


49 


tending  to  one  effect,  except  in  so  far  as  the  separate  areas  lay  one 
next  another  surrounding  the  house. 
-^  The  Elizabethan  pleasure  garden  *  was  an  outgrowth  of  the  earlier 
manner  of  English  gardening,  enriched  by  ideas  from  abroad,  but  still 
distinctly  a  national  style,  with  its  roots  in  its  native  soil.f  But  as 
the  riches  of  the  greater  land-holders  increased,  as  they  became  more 
familiar  with  the  customs  of  other  courts  and  with  the  growing  splendor 
of  the  gardens  of  Italy  and  France,  and  the  quaint  conceits  of  the  Dutch, 
imitations  of  the  styles  of  these  countries  displaced  on  many  estates 
the  older  English  work.  Later,  as  we  have  seen,  the  landscape  school 
arose,  destroyed  much  of  the  preceding  work  of  whatever  kind,  produced 
the  deadly  monotony  of  "Capability"  Brown,  the  puerilities  of  the  later 
Romantic  landscape  work,  and  settled  to  the  soberer  sense  of  Repton. 
From  Repton's  time  to  within  the  last  quarter  century  there  has  been 
little  new  landscape  design  in  England  worthy  of  much  serious  attention 
by  a  student  of  style ;  but  within  recent  years  there  has  been  a  revival 
of  the  studied  planning  of  gardens  truly  English  in  expression  J  which 
has  produced  work  not  widely  different  from  that  of  Elizabethan  times. 
This  is  largely  of  course  because  the  modern  designers  are  intentionally 
holding  fast  to  that  which  has  come  down  to  them  from  the  past,  but 
partly,  too,  it  is  because  the  modern  work  is  based,  as  was  the  old  work, 
on  the  character  of  the  people  and  of  the  country,  and  is  continuing  a 
tradition  which,  though  overlaid  from  time  to  time  with  other  styles, 
has  persisted  since  before  the  Tudor  times  down  to  the  present  day. 
(See  Drawing  VI,  opp.  p.  48,    and  Drawing  XX,  opp.  p.  158.) 

The  cottages  have  had  their  gardens  in  England  as  surely  as  have   The  English 
the  castles,  and  in  the  cottage  gardens  the  natural  conditions  produced  pottage 
a  similarity  of  appearance  worthy  of  the  name  of  a  style  more  certainly      "^  ^ 
than  was  the  case  in  the  larger  gardens,  because  no  seeking  of  novelty 

*  See  the  chapter  on  the  Elizabethan  garden  in  The  Hon.  Alicia  Amherst's  J 
History  of  Gardetiing  in  Englatid.     (See  References.) 

t  See,  for  instance,  the  views  of  Penshurst  and  Knole  given  in  Macartney's 
English  Houses  and  Gardens  in  the  X Filth  and  XVIIIth  Centuries.  (See  Refer- 
ences.) 

%  See  the  work  of  Mr.  Lutyens  as  illustrated  in  Lawrence  Weaver's  The  Houses 
and  Gardens  of  E.  L.  Lutyens,  London,  "  Country  Life,"  1914. 


50 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

for  the  sake  of  display,  no  transitory  style  of  another  country,  interfered 
with  the  unconscious  but  definite  working  out  of  these  forces.  The 
makers  of  these  cottage  gardens  were  poor  and  forced  to  consider  the 
practicality  of  everything  they  did.  They  were  tenacious  of  tradition, 
home-loving,  dwelling  in  the  same  holding  for  generation  after  genera- 
tion, each  man  adding  his  little,  as  circumstances  allowed,  to  what  he 
received  from  his  father  and  planned  to  leave  to  his  son.  The  gardens 
were  placed  close  about  the  houses  to  be  easy  of  cultivation  ;  they  were 
small,  hedged  in,  fitted  to  the  topography,  making  careful  use  of  local 
opportunities  and  local  materials,  often  given  over  largely  to  the  growth 
of  vegetables,  with  the  flowers  perhaps  lining  their  walks  or  filling  in 
odd  corners  by  the  door  of  the  house,  and  with  roses  and  flowering  vines 
covering  the  walls,  the  gate,  and  even  clambering  over  the  roof  of  the 
house  itself.  The  choice  of  local  material  for  the  house  as  well  as  for 
the  outlying  walls,  the  use  of  thatch  or  thick  and  irregular  slate  on  the 
roof,  the  closeness  of  adaptation  of  the  house  and  its  dependencies  to  the 
ground  (see  Drawing  XXIV,  opp.  p.  192),  which  comes  from  gradual 
growth  and  the  natural  unwillingness  of  the  poor  man  to  undertake  any 
avoidable  excavation  or  construction,  the  rich  enshrouding  of  ivy 
growing  untouched  for  centuries,  and  the  exuberance  of  hardy  flowering 
plants,  protected  but  not  restrained,  —  all  tend  to  make  the  typical 
English  cottage  with  its  garden  almost  in  itself  a  natural  object,*  — 
something  so  largely  the  work  of  time  and  so  little  the  conscious  design 
of  man  as  to  be  hard  to  imitate  under  other  circumstances,  but  still  an 
excellent  source  of  inspiration  to  any  one  who  is  seeking  to  make  a 
smaller  building  and  its  grounds  and  the  surrounding  landscape  all 
parts  of  one  composition.  (See  Drawing  VII,  opposite.) 
Thf  New  Many  of  the  early  Pilgrims  and  Puritans  left  just  such  cottages 

England  ^j^^j  cottage  gardens  as  we  have  been  discussing  when  they  came  from 

Style  the    old  England   to  the  New.     Their   first   permanent   houses   were 

as  like  those  to  which  they  were  accustomed  as  it  was  possible  for 
them  to  build  from  the  somewhat  unaccustomed  materials  at  hand. 

*  See  the  illustrations  in  books  on  English  cottages  such  as  Ditchfield's  Picturesque 
English  Cottages  and  their  Doorway  Gardens  (1905),  Dawber  and  Davie's  "  Old  Cottage" 
books  for  Cotswold,  Kent,  etc.,  published  by  Batsford,  or  Old  English  Country  Cot- 
tages, edited  by  Charles  Holme,  published  by  "  The  Studio,"  1906. 


STYLES    OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN s± 

Shingles  took  the  place  of  thatch,  wooden  construction  throughout, 
since  wood  was  so  plenty,  replaced  the  part  stone  construction  of  a 
land  where  wood  was  dear ;  but  there  are  to-day  a  considerable  number 
of  English  wooden  cottages  which  might  almost  stand  as  models  of  the 
houses  of  the  Pilgrims.  Within  a  very  few  years,  there  were  gardens 
around  these  houses  in  the  new  land ;  but  although  here  there  was 
ground  enough,  necessity  for  defense  and  economy  of  labor  in  cultiva- 
tion of  the  none  too  fertile  soil  still  kept  the  garden  small  and  near  the 
house  and  restricted  the  flowers  to  a  few  hardy  plants,  mostly  serving 
also  some  medicinal  or  household  use,  in  a  border  along  the  paths  in  a 
garden  otherwise  devoted  to  vegetables  and  fruit,  or  as  a  decoration  of 
the  front  dooryard,  —  a  bit  of  fragrance  and  color  and  a  reminder  of 
the  old  gardens  whence  their  seed  had  been  brought. 

In  later  times  when  the  prosperous  merchants  of  Salem  and  New- 
buryport  and  Portsmouth  and  Boston  built  their  houses  which  are 
still  the  much-copied  examples  of  New  England  colonial  architecture, 
their  gardens  did  not  depart  far  from  the  style  of  those  their  great 
grandfathers  had  built.  (See  Plate  5.)  The  white-painted  wooden 
picket  fence  and  the  latticed  vine  arbors  found  their  prototypes  in 
the  English  gardens,  though  rarely  were  the  English  structures  so 
refined  in  detail ;  the  pear-tree  bordered  walks  and  the  area  of  lawn 
and  box-bordered  flower  beds  and  vegetable  garden  lying  close  to- 
gether, or  often  indeed  forming  part  of  one  simple  design,  were  all 
what  their  owners  still  could  see  when  they  returned  to  the  mother 
country ;  and  the  flowers,  the  trees,  the  box  bushes  had  probably  most 
of  them  come  directly  from  England  as  did  in  the  early  days  the  bricks 
of  the  houses  themselves.  The  colonial  gardens  of  New  England  are 
different  in  style  from  the  cottage  gardens  of  England  not  because  the 
owners  had  different  ideals  of  design,  but  because  their  surroundings 
in  the  new  world  forced  upon  them  a  different  choice  of  material  and 
eventually  a  different  method  of  life.* 

Previous  to  the  very  modern  national  consciousness  of  the  German  The  Modem 
empire,  there  has  been  in  Germany  nothing  which  could  fairly  be  called  ^'''''"^^ 

*  Cf.  Grace  Tabor's  Old-fashioned  Gardening,  a  History  and  a  Reconstruction,  in    ■-''y'^ 
which  Chapter  V,  Austere  Puritan  Gardens,  treats  this  one  of  the  five  styles  of  American 
colonial  gardens  which  she  differentiates.     (See  References.) 


52 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


an  independent  historic  style  of  landscape  design,  unless,  perhaps,  we 
should  except  the  cottage  gardens.  Just  as  English  cottages  and  their 
gardens  had  an  unconscious  similarity  of  form  due  to  similar  conditions, 
there  is  a  recognizable  similarity  of  construction,  though  to  a  less  degree, 
among  German  cottages  and  gardens,  and  indeed  some  modern  German 
designers  are  finding  part  of  their  present  inspiration  in  this  old  work.* 
But  the  long-continued  turbulence  and  destruction  to  which  Germany 
has  been  subject  has  left  to  modern  times  but  comparatively  few  examples 
of  such  prototypes.  In  larger  designs,  such  recognizable  style  as  there 
has  been  in  Germany  has  been  first  the  Dutch,  then  the  style  of  Le  Notre, 
then  that  of  the  ^'Englischer  Garten.'^  In  many  cases  these  styles  in 
Germany  appeared  in  ill-considered  imitations  of  their  originals ;  but 
as  disciples  of  the  landscape  school,  Germany  has  shown  in  Hirschfeld, 
Sckell,  and  Prince  Piickler  von  Muskau  a  conception  of  naturalistic 
design  which  worthily  matched  the  work  of  Repton  and  Price,  and 
largely  inspired  the  naturalistic  ideals  of  Petzold  and  of  such  a  present- 
day  writer  as  Camillo  Karl  Schneider,  f 

The  modern  German  conscious  seeking  for  national  expression  in 
every  field  has  had  its  influence  on  German  landscape  architecture 
notably  in  the  production  of  a  formal  style  of  landscape  design,  inten- 
tionally different  from  any  style  which  has  gone  before.  In  many 
another  style  the  artist  has  consciously  adapted  his  means  to  his  ends 
to  express  the  ideal  which  seemed  to  him  of  most  worth,  but  here  for 
the  first  time  landscape  designers  have  gone  deliberately  to  work  to 
determine  what  their  national  ideal  ought  to  be  and  then  logically 
deduced  what  means  should  be  employed  for  its  attainment.  To  be 
sure,  there  is  easily  traceable  a  strong  influence  from  English  landscape 
designs,!  but  it  has  been  accepted  in  general  principle  rather  than 
adopted  exactly  in  any  part,  and  the  result  is  certainly  an  independent 

*  For  instance  see  Schultze-Naumburg's  Kulturarbeiten,  and  the  Introduction 
by  J.  A.  Lux  to  Volkstumliche  Kunst,  Ansichten  von  alten  heimatlichen  Bauformen, 
Land-  und  Bauernhdusern,  Hofen,  Garten.  .  .  Photographisch  aufgenommen  von 
Martin  Gerlach.     (1904.) 

t  See  his  Landschaftliche  Gartengestaltung,  p.  4.     (See  References.) 
X  Especially  through  the  writings  and  designs  of   Hermann  Muthesius.     (See 
References.) 


STTLES    OF    LANDSCAPE     DESIGN 


53 


style.  The  modern  German  formal  landscape  work  seems  to  show,  to 
the  non-German,  the  weakness  as  well  as  the  strength  of  its  conception 
of  design.  In  the  smaller  private  places  where  the  needs  and  the  life 
of  the  owner  can  be  definitely  known,  the  adaptation  of  the  different 
parts  of  the  scheme  each  to  its  use,  the  arrangement  of  these  parts  for 
economic  efficiency,  is  usually  excellent,  and  where  the  designer  has 
been  blessed  by  nature  with  a  sensitiveness  to  beauty  of  form,  the 
proportions  and  arrangements  of  these  parts  are  often  consistent  and 
beautiful.  But  especially  in  parks  where  the  form  of  the  design  has 
been  made  to  depend  on  its  obvious  and  economic  functions,  with  no 
consideration  for  the  lightness  of  touch  that  comes  from  a  certain  way- 
wardness, the  result  seems,  esthetically,  uninspired. 

In  decoration,  particularly  in  the  choice  of  statuary  and  similar 
features,  indeed  in  all  that  part  of  landscape  design  where  the  choice  of 
form  is  a  matter  of  esthetic  sensitiveness  rather  than  economic  adapta- 
tion, the  modern  German  feeling  that  a  German  must  be  different  from 
other  men  in  his  nature  and  In  his  needs  has  found  an  Interesting 
expression.  In  the  landscape  work  of  the  past,  the  modern  designer 
has  an  infinity  of  examples  of  forms  adapted  by  artists  to  the  various 
needs  of  man,  esthetic  and  economic,  the  results  of  centuries  of  experi- 
ment and  refinement.  When,  as  has  been  the  case  In  some  of  the 
modern  German  work,  a  designer  attempts  to  meet  these  same  needs  — 
for  in  effect  they  are  the  same  throughout  all  time  —  by  some  conscious 
Independent  Invention  of  his  own,  his  work  is  likely  to  seem,  as  much  of 
this  German  decorative  work  seems  to  most  non-Germans  —  and  to 
some  of  the  Germans  themselves  —  grotesque  or  childish  or  at  best 
crude. 

In  another  respect  the  Prussian  cast  of  mind  has  impressed  Itself 
recognizably  upon  this  new  design.  In  private  estates,  in  parks  large 
and  small,  in  other  public  designs,  and  recently  in  cemeteries,  the  Prus- 
sian impatience  of  anything  indefinite  and  not  to  be  accurately  codified 
has  produced  a  leaning  to  formality  of  design  to  the  exclusion  of  other 
possible  solutions  of  some  of  the  problems.  This  formality  has  been 
the  more  insisted  on  In  the  smaller  private  places,  because  it  lends  Itself 
to  the  typical  German  care  and  method  of  up-keep,  and  because,  in  the 
usual  rectangular  lot,  such  an  arrangement  is  the  least  wasteful  of  land, 


54 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


and  because  the  national  habit  of  sitting  outdoors  and  eating  and 
drinking  in  a  leisurely  way  makes  of  the  grounds  about  a  house  a  number 
of  outdoor  rooms  actually  much  used,  for  which  use  the  rectangular 
forms  are  the  more  convenient.  And  there  is  a  very  just  feeling  among 
German  designers,  helped  doubtless  by  this  use  of  the  grounds,  that  the 
house  and  its  surroundings  are  all  part  of  one  architectural  scheme  and 
should  be  so  treated  for  esthetic  as  well  as  economic  reasons.  (See 
Drawing  VIII,  opposite.)  The  considerable  amount  of  garden  archi- 
tecture and  garden  furniture  required  —  shelters  and  arbors,  seats 
and  tables  —  makes  more  necessary  and  more  easy  the  architectural 
treatment  of  the  ground.  The  national  habit  of  congregating  of  an 
evening  in  some  quiet  and  orderly  concert-garden  or  beer-garden  has 
produced  a  multitude  of  these  places,  the  design  of  which,  for  practical 
reasons,  is  almost  invariably  formal.  All  these  considerations  have 
probably  had  their  effect  on  the  design  of  the  German  park.  Those 
parks  which  serve  the  purpose  of  playgrounds  are,  in  fitness  to  their  use, 
formal ;  but  some  of  the  much  larger  parks,  which  in  this  country  would 
be  treated  naturalistically,  still  are  affairs  of  open  level  turf  or  gravel 
and  straight  lines  of  equi-spaced  trees,  usually  without  any  attempt  to 
make  this  formality  tell  for  grandeur  as  in  the  French  formal  style,  but 
being  rather  an  economic  fitting  of  each  area  to  its  use  and  up-keep, 
and  an  arrangement  of  all  the  available  area  of  ground  so  that  nothing 
may  be  wasted.  The  fact  that  the  topography  of  these  formal  parks  is 
often  flat  has  evidently  also  been  a  contributing  cause  to  this  formality. 
As  in  the  case  of  another  self-conscious  expression,  the  Romantic 
landscape  style,  this  German  formalism  has  been  accompanied  by  prop- 
agandist literature,  of  which  Leberecht  Migge  in  his  recent  book 
Gartenkultur  des  XX.  Jahrhunderts  (1913),*  is  an  advanced  exemplar. 
What  is  to  be  the  future  of  the  Gartenkultur  and  Gartefitypen  which  he 
so  earnestly  recommends  for  Germany,  and  apparently  also  for  the 
rest  of  the  world,  will  depend,  however,  on  their  fitness  in  use,  on  their 
adaptability  to  the  actual  needs  of  men. 
The  Japanese  Arising  many  centuries  earlier  than  the  landscape  school  of  Western 

Styles  Europe  and  under  a  quite  different  civilization,  the  styles  of  Japanese 

landscape  design   nevertheless   have  something  in  common    with   the 

*  See  References. 


STTLES    OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


55 


Romantic  landscape  style  which  we  have  already  discussed.  In  both 
styles  designers  found  an  inspiration  in  Nature  which  they  used  in  a 
conventional  way  in  design ;  in  both  styles  the  separate  scenes  of  a 
design  are  unified  by  the  emotional  effects  which  they  were  intended  to 
produce ;  but  whereas  the  western  Romantic  landscape  style  was  a 
sudden  unreasoning  outburst  of  revolt  against  previous  repression, 
which  arose,  ran  to  absurdity,  and  died  down  within  less  than  a  century, 
the  Japanese  styles  are  the  expression  of  a  racial  feeling  and  reverence 
for  Nature,  wrought  out,  conventionalized,  and  symbolized  through  a 
period  of  over  a  thousand  years,  by  successive  generations  of  artists, 
who,  unlike  the  designers  of  the  Romantic  style,  produced  almost  in- 
variably symbols  of  intrinsically  beautiful  form.     (See  Plate  4.) 

In  the  best  of  the  Japanese  gardens,  every  natural  beauty  large 
and  small  of  the  sites  occupied  has  been  made  use  of  and  increased. 
Any  harmonious  outside  views  which  could  possibly  be  developed 
have  been  recognized,  enframed,  and  made  a  part  of  the  picture  of 
the  garden.  The  garden  itself  is  thoroughly  screened,  when  its  size 
makes  this  possible,  from  the  intrusion  of  anything  out  of  scale  or 
inharmonious  in  association  with  the  purpose  of  the  design.  Where 
the  scale  of  the  design  warrants  it  and  equally  where  a  careful 
diminution  of  scale  makes  it  possible,  the  gardens  are  often  adapta- 
tions and  imitations  of  scenes  in  Nature ;  but  they  are  almost  never 
indiscriminate  copies.  They  are  representations  of  a  chosen  expres- 
sion of  Nature,  a  chosen  effect,  and  everything  in  the  design  is  care- 
fully studied  to  cooperate  in  this  effect.  Through  centuries  of  studied 
appreciation,  the  ordinary  forms  used  in  garden  design,  as  in  the  other 
arts  in  Japan,  have  become  largely  conventionalized.  Trees  and 
shrubs  have  been  pruned  into  shapes  not  natural  but  supposed  to 
represent  more  typically  the  character  of  the  particular  plants.  There 
is  a  conventional  relation  of  plants  to  water  or  stones  or  lanterns. 
Certain  arrangements  of  stones  represent  a  brook ;  certain  light- 
colored  stones  represent  a  waterfall,  being  set  and  enframed  as  a 
waterfall  might  be ;  a  level  area  covered  with  white  sand  represents 
a  sheet  of  water ;  certain  shapes  and  arrangements  of  stones  represent 
a  mountain.  Many  forms  are  used,  too,  in  a  purely  symbolic  way, 
representing  and  suggesting  certain  emotions  supposed  to  be  proper 


56 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

to  certain  places  and  occasions,  and  so  on  through  a  range  of  symbol- 
ism, not  all  of  which  would  be  apparent  to  an  untrained  Euro- 
pean eye,  nor  even,  indeed,  to  the  eyes  of  many  of  the  modern 
Japanese.  This  symbolic  use  of  objects  as  representing  larger  natural 
forms  and  as  suggesting  certain  emotional  effects  has  enabled  the 
Japanese  to  compose  on  a  miniature  piece  of  ground  a  suggestion  of  a 
large  natural  landscape.  In  these  miniature  compositions  it  is  of 
course  not  for  a  moment  supposed  that  the  design  is  an  imitation  of  its 
natural  prototype,  but  rather  that,  as  in  a  stanza  of  poetry,  the  forms 
used  should  be  in  themselves  beautiful,  their  arrangement  in  composition 
should  be  pleasing,  their  significance  should  be  worthy,  and  the  sequence 
of  associations  aroused  by  their  symbolism  should  be  harmonious. 

The  points  of  view  from  which  the  various  compositions  are  to  be 
seen,  especially  from  the  principal  rooms  of  the  house,  the  sequence  in 
which  the  various  views  are  to  be  presented  to  the  visitor,  are  carefully 
considered  and  carefully  designated  in  the  design  of  the  garden,  —  cer- 
tain shelters,  certain  stones,  certain  bridges,  certain  lanterns,  being 
placed  in  certain  definitely  related  positions ;  and  these  arrangements 
are  to  a  considerable  extent  a  matter  of  convention  and  symbolism, 
though  in  their  actual  physical  arrangement  at  the  hands  of  the  designer 
they  are  seldom  twice  alike. 

These  compositions  have  usually  been  closely  studied  in  relation 
to  the  topography  and  to  the  life,  means,  and  tastes  of  the  owner,  the 
artist  endeavoring  to  choose  a  conception  for  his  design  which  should 
be  thoroughly  appropriate  in  every  way,  and  then  to  carry  out  this  con- 
ception, however  humble,  to  its  fullest  realization.  To  the  Japanese, 
trained  as  they  have  been,  almost  without  exception,  to  appreciate  the 
beauty  of  an  arrangement  of  a  few  precious  objects  on  the  tokonoma 
in  their  houses,  accustomed  to  seeing  infinite  pains  taken  in  the  arrange- 
ment of  a  single  sprig  of  blossoming  cherry  in  a  vase,  there  has  seemed 
little  difference  in  the  degree  of  artistic  achievement  between  the  tiny 
garden  of  the  poor  man  and  the  no  more  perfectly  designed  property  of 
the  prince.  There  are  three  degrees  of  finish  in  which  a  design  may  be 
carried  out,  the  bold  or  rough,  the  intermediate,  and  the  finished  or 
highly-wrought.  Whichever  kind  of  finish  is  chosen  is  carefully  adhered 
to  throughout  the  design.     Whatever  type  of  garden  —  landscape  or 


STTLES    OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 57 

level  or  court  or  tea-room  *  —  circumstances  or  taste  may   have   dic- 
tated, its  own  symbols  and  conventions  are  followed  by  the  designer. 

Prior  to  1850,!  there  was  comparatively  little  landscape  design  of  The  Modem 
any  kind  in  the  United  States.     In  the  settled  communities  of  our  ■^"■^J'^<»n 
Eastern  coast,  there  were   small   gardens,  mostly  in   the   style  of  the  ^lyig 
part    of    Europe    from   which    their    owners    had    come,|    and    there 
were  also  some  large  private  estates  almost  always  in  the  English  land- 
scape manner  or  some  adaptation  of  it  to  our  conditions  ;   in  California 
there  were  the  gardens  of  the  Spanish  missions.     With  these  exceptions, 
there  was  no  definite  mode  of  landscape  treatment  to  be  found  in  the 
country,  worthy  to  be  called  a  style. 

With  the  tremendous  growth  of  our  cities  and  the  industrial  develop- 
ment of  the  whole  country,  there  came  an  increase  of  wealth  and  the 
rise  of  a  whole  class  of  people  who  could  afford  to  own  a  country'  estate, 
while  doing  business  regularly  or  occasionally  in  the  city.  Also  there 
was  an  enormous  increase  in  the  number  of  people  who,  while  daily 
workers  in  the  city,  were  still  able  to  own  and  enjoy  a  small  piece  of 
land  in  the  suburbs.  And  further,  the  civic  problem  arose  of  the  well- 
being  of  the  hundreds  of  thousands  of  people,  who,  having  flocked  to 
the  cities  for  employment,  were  unable  of  themselves  to  obtain  the  rest 
and  refreshment  in  open  surroundings  which  the  oppression  of  their 
work  and  life  in  the  city  was  making  increasingly  necessary.  There 
was  thus  a  very  real  and  pressing  demand  for  the  utilization  of  the  land- 
scape by  man,  not  for  an  economic  use,  not  primarily  to  delight  him 
with  beautiful  compositions  of  form  and  color,  but  to  serve  as  a  relief, 
an  antidote  to  the  too  great  insistence  of  his  own  affairs  and  his  own 
constructions.  §  In  response  to  this  demand  came  the  work  of  Olm- 
sted and  Vaux,  and  H.  W.  S.  Cleveland,  Charles  Eliot  and  many  others  ; 

*  This  subdivision  is  taken  from  an  unpublished  manuscript  by  Takekatzu  Uenoru 
Takata  of  Kioto  (secured  for  the  Harvard  School  of  Landscape  Architecture  by  B.  Y. 
Morrison,  Sheldon  Travelling  Fellow),  written  in  English  in  1893,  apparently  without 
the  author's  knowing  of  Conder's  work  published  the  same  year. 

t  Note  the  work  of  Andrew  Jackson  Downing.  His  editorials  in  the  Horticul- 
turalist  on  the  need  for  public  parks  appeared  in  184S-1849. 

i  Cf.  the  reference  to  Grace  Tabor's  Old-fashioned  Gardening,  given  in  footnote 
on  p.  51. 

§  Cf.  Chapter  I,  p.  i  and  Chapter  V,  p.  75. 


^8 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

and  of  these  much  the  best  known  is  Frederick  Law  Olmsted,  Sr.,  on 
account  of  his  work  with  Calvert  Vaux  on  Central  Park,  his  work  on  a 
long  succession  of  parks  and  estates  from  1853  to  1895,  and  his  writings. 

In  its  treatment  of  parks  and  large  private  estates,*  this  American 
style  of  landscape  design  traces  its  origin  directly  to  the  English  land- 
scape school,  but  in  the  American  work  the  designers  sought  with 
much  more  appreciation  the  preservation  and  interpretation  of  natural 
character.  The  English  designers  had  desired  to  express  the  magnifi- 
cence and  taste  of  the  owner  in  a  composition  of  natural  ground  forms 
and  trees  modeled  after  the  beautiful  English  countryside,  rather  than 
to  suggest  the  freedom  of  little-humanized  Nature  in  which  a  man  might 
lose  his  consciousness  of  self.  The  choice  of  indigenous  plant  material, 
the  study  of  the  arrangement  of  this  material  in  accordance  with  its 
own  character  and  of  that  in  the  landscape  in  which  it  appeared,  is 
therefore  an  important  consideration  in  this  American  style.  The 
landscape  characters,  however,  the  "natural"  landscape  scenes,  which 
this  style  usually  seized  upon  to  enhance  and  reproduce,  are  seldom 
the  unhampered  work  of  nature ;  more  usually  they  are  the  scenes  of 
pasture  and  woodlot,  shrub-grown  wall,  and  elm-dotted  river  bottom, 
which  are  partly  the  results  of  man's  activity  in  the  less  Intensively- 
used  farm  land.  This  mode  of  treatment  of  the  landscape  on  large 
areas  has  not  only  the  esthetic  advantage  which  has  been  pointed  out, 
but  also  the  economic  advantage  that  thus  it  may  make  use  of  much 
existing  beauty  of  land-form  and  vegetation,  and  thus  it  can  be  con- 
sistent with  land  lying  beyond  its  boundaries  and  so  give  a  still  greater 
sense  of  freedom  and  extent. f  (See  series  of  views  of  Franklin  Park, 
Boston,  Plates  31  to  35,  and  plan,  Drawing  XXXV,  opp.  p.  298.) 

In  the  smaller  suburban  places,  where  the  buildings  are  visible 
if  not  dominant  and  where  It  Is  quite  impossible  to  produce  exactly  the 
effect  of  a  free  landscape,  this  style  takes  on  itself  a  somewhat  different 
manifestation.  Even  In  the  compass  of  an  area  of  half  an  acre,  there 
may  be  an  open  irregular  lawn  surrounded  by  promontories  and  bays 

*  For  a  detailed  discussion  of  tlie  design  of  American  estates  and  landscape  parks, 
see  Chapter  XI. 

t  As  in  the  English  landscape  style.  "Appropriation"  was  one  of  Repton's  cardi- 
nal principles.     Cf.  footnote  on  p.  267. 


STTLES     OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


59 


of  planting  and  broken  by  two  or  three  free-standing  trees.  (See  Plate 
6.)  Such  an  arrangement  need  make  no  attempt  to  imitate  the  natural 
forms  which  have  inspired  it.  It  may  be  obviously  man-made  and  may 
contain  arrangements  of  plants  and  flowers  not  native,  but  the  design 
may  still  suggest  free  landscape  by  the  natural  character  of  the  plant 
material  and  its  informal  arrangement,  and  may  still  thus  in  its  small 
compass  be  a  more  restful  thing  to  its  suburban  owner  than  any  purely 
formal  design  might  be.*  In  small  lots  of  irregular  shape  this  informal 
design  has  an  additional  advantage,  namely,  that  it  is  possible  to  sub- 
divide the  area  into  the  necessary  functional  units  and  to  group  them 
with  the  least  possible  waste  of  space,  thereby  leaving  the  maximum 
space  for  such  uses  as,  for  instance,  a  lawn  which  gives  by  its  open  area 
some  sense  of  extent  to  the  design. 

From  the  nature  of  the  case  this  work  on  small  properties,  usually 
with  no  possibility  of  great  expense  for  a  trained  designer,  has  fallen 
often  into  unskilled  hands,  and  what  should  have  been  suggestion  of 
natural  beauty  has  degenerated  into  meaningless  undulations  of  shrub 
beds  and  meanderings  of  paths  very  similar  to  unfortunate  examples  of 
the  landscape  style  in  Europe.  When  designed  and  maintained  by 
persons  of  taste,  however,  this  style,  even  in  a  very  small  area,  can  be 
treated  in  a  way  not  essentially  different  from  the  symbolic  work  of  the 
Japanese,  and  it  can  be,  in  the  same  way,  a  work  of  art. 

The  modern  landscape  architect  has  in  the  examples  of  the  styles  Study  of 
of  the  past  a  treasury  of  inspiration  and  information  to  aid  him  in  his  S«y/^x 
present  work ;  but  he  should  study  these  styles  not  as  an  archaeologist, 
not  as  a  copyist,  but  as  a  workman  providing  himself  with  tools  for 
future  original  use.  He  should  endeavor  to  see  how  in  each  case  the 
designer  met  a  particular  and  individual  problem;  he  should  feel  a 
brotherly  and  human  interest  in  the  way  his  predecessor  has  adapted 
means  to  ends ;  and  he  should  thus  get  from  an  example  in  any  style 
some  inspiration  for  his  own  work,  however  different  its  circumstances 
may  be.  More  specifically  he  studies  each  style  to  determine  the 
essential  effects  of  each ;  to  learn  what  esthetic  ideas  may  best  be  ex- 
pressed through  the  medium  of  its  typical  forms ;    and  he  familiarizes 

*  See  the  article  by  F.  L.  Olmsted,  Sr.,  in  Johnson's  Universal  Cyclopedia,  under 
the  heading  Landscape  Gardening,  ist  (1876)  and  later  editions. 


6o  LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

himself  with  the  typical  forms  occurring  in  each  style  and  considers 
how  these  forms  will  serve  and  express  the  economic  uses  of  his  own 

designs. 
Choice  of  In  studying  styles  which  we  may  wish  to  adapt  to  our  own  needs, 

^'^^^  we  should  therefore  try  to  discover  their  creating  factors,  that  is,  we 

should  study  the  history  and  characteristics  of  the  people  who  originated 
them,  their  purposes,  the  surroundings  in  which  the  work  was  done, 
and  the  various  materials  used,  because  if  these  conditions  are  not 
paralleled  in  new  work  after  that  style,  the  work  is  apt  to  be  both  in- 
congruous and  inconvenient.  Indeed,  the  very  perfection  of  a  design 
meeting  one  set  of  conditions,  may  make  it  unfit  for  other  conditions, 
and  hard  to  change  in  parts  without  destroying  the  unity  of  the  whole. 
In  the  matter  of  suitability  of  a  design  in  a  certain  style  to  its  land- 
scape surroundings,  it  is  hardly  possible  to  draw  any  general  conclusions. 
An  Italian  villa  is  definitely  separated  from  the  country  about  it,  an 
English  landscape  scheme  blends  into  its  surroundings  by  imperceptible 
degrees.  Whether  in  a  new  case  harmony  or  contrast  would  be 
more  desirable,  only  a  study  of  the  individual  new  problem  will  tell. 
In  matters  of  association,  however,  the  harmony  or  contrast  of  a  certain 
style  with  its  surroundings  is  reasonably  predictable.  A  perfect  copy 
of  an  Italian  villa  set  down  upon  a  New  England  hillside  would  prob- 
ably seem,  at  least  to  any  one  familiar  with  Italy,  incongruous,  purely 
through  the  tremendous  difference  in  association  between  the  scheme 
and  the  surrounding  landscape,  but  if  an  Italian  scheme  without 
essential  difference  of  organization  were  worked  out  in  New  England 
in  local  material  and  planted  with  local  trees,  no  particular  associa- 
tional  incongruity  might  result.  The  great  variety  of  climate,  topog- 
raphy, and  plant  materials  and  the  different  nationalities  which  have 
contributed  to  our  population  suggest  to  us  a  wide  range  of  inspiration 
from  the  styles  of  other  countries. 

Practical  considerations  of  construction  and  upkeep  will  of  course 
play  an  important  part  in  determining  the  choice  of  style.  A  style 
which  depends  for  its  beauty  on  delicate  detail  and  elaborate  ornament 
cannot  be  adapted  to  an  inexpensive  scheme.  A  style  which,  although 
in  its  original  it  bears  such  detail,  depends  for  its  essential  effect  on 
boldness  and  solidity  of  mass,  may  perhaps  be  successfully  translated 


STTLES    OF    LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


6i 


into  a  coarser  and  cheaper  material.  Where  no  particular  esthetic 
appreciation  may  be  expected  in  those  charged  with  the  upkeep  of  a 
design,  as  for  instance  in  some  parks,  an  obvious  formal  scheme  may 
succeed,  because  for  instance  a  dead  tree  in  a  row  will  be  noticed  and 
replaced,  whereas  in  the  occult  balance  of  an  informal  scheme  a  missing 
tree  ma)^  be  replaced  by  another  of  different  effect  or  not  replaced  at  all. 
One  value  which  a  style  may  have  when  used  or  adapted  in  new 
surroundings  depends  upon  the  familiarity  of  the  observer  with  the 
style  in  its  native  place.  An  arrangement  of  an  American  country 
place  which  suggests  an  English  pastoral  landscape  has  to  a  man 
,  familiar  with  England  an  added  delight,  because  it  calls  to  his  mind 
additional  remembered  beauties ;  and  the  recent  designs  of  estates 
inspired  by  Italian  examples  *  hold  for  lovers  of  Italy  a  pleasure  and  a 
unity  through  association  which  is  no  small  part  of  their  charm. 

*  Cf.  the  work  of  Mr.  Piatt  as  illustrated  in  Monograph  of  the  Work  of  Charles  A. 
Plait,  with  an  Introduction  by  Royal  Cortissoz,  1913. 


CHAPTER  V 


The  Physical 
Origin  of 
Landscape 
Characters 


LANDSCAPE   CHARACTERS 

The  physical  origin  of  landscape  characters  —  Characters  as  parallel  to 
STYLES  —  Examples  of  landscape  characters  —  The  prairie  —  The  barren  or 
tundra  —  Sand  dunes  —  The  Sequoia  grove  —  The  Sierra  mountain  meadow  — 
The  bushy  pasture  —  English  pastoral  landscape  —  Design  in  landscape  char- 
acters —  Landscape  characters  in  relation  to  economic  use  and  maintenance  — 
Value  and  preservation  of  characteristic  scenery  —  Man's  need  of  free 
landscape. 

If  a  natural  feature,  or  area  of  the  earth's  surface,  is  felt  to  be 
esthetically  unified,  if  there  is  a  naturally-produced  harmony  among 
its  parts,  we  may  say  that  this  natural  unit  has  character,  just  as  we 
say  of  a  man-made  object,  esthetically  unified,  that  it  has  style. 

All  natural  features  are  produced  by  natural  forces  —  gravitation, 
the  flow  of  water,  the  expansion  of  frost,  the  force  of  the  winds,  the 
power  of  plant  growth  —  acting  upon  the  materials  which  compose 
and  clothe  the  earth.  If  any  group  of  these  forces  remain  for  long 
enough  in  some  constant  relation,  so  that  their  effect  on  the  materials 
in  a  particular  case  is  approximately  constant,  a  harmony  of  charac- 
teristics, a  character,  will  inevitably  result,  which  can  be  esthetically 
perceived  in  the  landscape,  even  though  the  observer  has  no  knowledge 
of  what  forces  produced  it.  (See  Frontispiece.)  For  example,  a 
stream  of  a  certain  size  flowing  through  material  of  a  certain  kind  will 
produce  after  a  number  of  centuries  a  valley  of  a  definite  shape.  If 
the  expression  of  the  force  of  the  stream  as  shown  forth  by  this  valley 
is  not  confused  by  some  other  manifestation  of  nature's  activity,  such 
as  a  filling  up  of  the  valley  by  a  landslide,  then  the  valley  will  have 
character,  and  this  character,  this  mode  of  organization,  will  be  felt 
esthetically  by  the  beholder.  It  will  create  in  his  mind  a  different 
esthetic  impression  from  what  would  be  created  by  another  valley 

62 


LANDSCAPE    CHARACTERS 63 

which  had  been  brought  about  by  any  considerably  different  combina- 
tion of  forces  and  materials.  Whether  or  not  this  valley  is  called  com- 
positionally  beautiful  will  depend  on  the  completeness  of  the  approach 
to  esthetic  unity  of  its  characteristics.  Beauty  will  be  rendered  more 
likely  by  the  order  produced  by  a  clear  unblurred  expression  of  natural 
forces,  but  beauty  does  not  inevitably  arise  from  such  an  expression. 

There  is  of  course  an  infinite  number  of  different  valleys,  as  there  is  Characters  as 
of  gardens.  The  differences  between  one  valley  and  another  and  P^^j^^l'l  to 
between  one  garden  and  another  are  often  so  small  that  they  cannot 
profitably  be  referred  to  respectively  as  differences  of  character  or 
differences  of  style.  On  the  other  hand,  there  are  typical  kinds  of 
valleys  (compare  Plates  22  and  23),  just  as  there  are  typical  kinds  of 
gardens,  dependent  in  each  case  on  typical  constant  modes  of  organi- 
zation ;  and  valleys  or  gardens  which  are  made  in  some  particular 
typical  way  and  approximate  to  the  resulting  typical  characteristics 
may  be  spoken  of  as  being  of  this  particular  character,  or  style,  as  the 
case  may  be.*  Just  as  we  agree  to  designate  as  historic  styles  those 
styles  which  have  arisen  at  different  times  in  histor}*,  through  similarity 
of  man's  action  under  similar  circumstances,  so,  when  at  different 
points  on  the  earth's  surface  the  natural  forces  come  to  be  correlated  in 
a  similar  way,  working  on  similar  material,  their  results  are  sufficiently 
similar  so  that  we  may  say  that  they  have  the  same  landscape  char- 
acter. This  similarity  of  the  character  of  one  unified  landscape  to  that 
of  another  exists,  as  we  have  said,  in  all  degrees,  and,  just  as  with  his- 
toric styles,  only  a  few  of  these  instances  of  similarity  have  interested 
man  enough  so  that  he  has  given  them  specific  names.  Indeed  it  is  a 
cause  of  great  difficulty  in  discussing  natural  character  that  there  are 
many  important  characters  which  we  can  perfectly  recognize  through 
their  esthetic  expression,  but  for  which  we  have  no  definite  names.  And 
furthermore,  the  names  which  we  do  have  to  designate  different  land- 
scape characters  are  used  primarily  for  another  purpose  :  they  are 
usually  names  of  shapes  or  occasionally  names  of  materials.  So,  if  we 
wish  to  name  specifically  a  landscape  character,  we  are  almost  always 
driven  to  use  a  cumbersome  phrase,  just  as  we  must  usually  do  in 
designating  styles,  defining  it  by  association,  or  connection,  rather  than 

*  Compare  landscape  characters  and  historic  styles. 


64 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Examples  of 

Landscape 

Characters 


The  Prairie 


by  its  esthetic  essence.  We  say,  for  example,  Florentine  Renaissance 
garden,  and  Alpine  glaciated  valley,  —  the  name  used  in  each  of  these 
cases  being  the  name  of  the  example  in  which  the  style  or  character 
reaches  its  most  complete  expression.  A  few  examples  of  natural 
characters,  from  the  infinity  of  possibilities,  may  make  it  plainer  both 
that  these  characters  are  essentially  different,  and  that  this  difference 
is  the  different  expression  of  the  natural  forces  which  have  produced 
them. 

The  simplest  and,  largely  for  this  reason,  some  of  the  most  striking 
landscape  characters  are  those  which  depend  on  the  simplest  ground 
form,  the  plain.  The  prairie  is  of  all  landscapes  the  most  unchanging 
in  its  form.  Its  level  surface  off^ers  no  point  of  attack  to  the  erosion 
of  water,  and,  protected  by  its  matted  sod,  it  is  safe  also  from  the 
power  of  the  wind.  As  the  prairie  was  when  the  white  man  came,  so 
it  had  been  through  ages  which  have  witnessed  enormous  changes  in 
all  the  mountains  and  river  valleys  of  the  continent. 

The  sea  alone,  or  a  great  lake,  can  vie  with  the  prairie  in  the  over- 
whelming simplicity  of  its  effect.  Extent,  vastness,  are  alike  in  prairie 
and  sea,  but  while  the  sea  is  always  alive,  even  if  at  times  asleep,  the 
prairie  is  dead.  It  is  immovable,  ponderous,  monotonous,  stupefying. 
Each  slight  undulation  which  bounds  the  view  gives  promise  of  some- 
thing different  beyond,  a  promise  always  unfulfilled  as  one  swell  of 
ground  succeeds  another  through  days  of  travel.*  But  nowhere  better 
than  on  a  prairie  are  to  be  seen  the  glories  of  the  powers  of  the  air. 
The  squadrons  of  towering  white  cumulus  clouds,  giving  In  their 
diminishing  perspective  even  a  vaster  sweep  of  view  than  the  land, 
the  daily  miracles  of  sunset  and  sunrise,  the  clean  and  exhilarating 
summer  breeze,  or  the  deadly  fury  of  a  prairie  blizzard,  give  to  a  man 

*  "The  unending  vision  of  sky  and  grass,  the  dim,  distant,  and  ever-shifting  hori- 
zon ;  the  ridges  that  seem  to  be  rolled  upon  one  another  in  motionless  torpor ;  the  effect 
of  sunrise  and  sunset,  of  night  narrowing  the  vision  to  nothing,  and  morning  only  ex- 
panding it  to  a  shapeless  blank;  the  sigh  and  sough  of  a  breeze  that  seems  an  echo 
in  unison  with  the  solitude  of  which  it  is  the  sole  voice;  and,  above  all,  the  sense  of 
lonely,  unending  distance  which  comes  to  the  voyageur  when  day  after  day  has  gone  by, 
night  has  closed,  and  morning  dawned  upon  his  onward  progress  under  the  same  ever- 
moving  horizon  of  grass  and  sky." 

Capt.  W.  F.  Butler's  The  Wild  North  Land,  London,  1873,  p.  50. 


LANDSCAPE    CHARACTERS 65 

in  an  unusual  degree  a  sense  of  standing  directly  in  the  presence  of  the 
great  forces  of  the  natural  world. 

In  many  places  man's  activities  will  eventually  mask  the  character 
of  the  prairie.  The  flowers  —  the  typical  vegetation  generally  —  can 
and  will  be  preserved.*  Smaller  stretches  of  open  level  turf  will  doubt- 
less always  remain,  even  in  the  midst  of  intensive  cultivation  and  urban 
development.  But  inevitably  in  many  portions  of  the  prairie  man's 
trees  and  houses  will  break  the  openness  of  the  ground,  and  its  essen- 
tial character,  its  boundless  extent,  will  be  no  longer  apparent  except 
to  those  who  in  aeroplanes  are  above  the  minor  interruptions  of  the 
view.  It  is  a  question  whether  the  owners  of  the  soil  will  ever  go  so 
far  as  to  sacrifice  many  square  miles  of  valuable  prairie  land  merely  for 
the  preservation  of  a  landscape  effect.  One  thing  is  certain,  at  any 
rate,  not  by  preserving  its  flora  alone,  but  only  by  preserving  its  expanse 
can  the  spirit  of  the  prairie  be  preserved. 

There  are  examples  of  flat  or  rolling  country  where,  with  other  skies  The  Barren 
and  other  vegetation,  the  character  is  utterly  different.  Such  a  land-  "^  Tundra 
scape  may  be  found  in  the  occasional  level  stretches  of  the  "Barrens" 
of  the  interior  of  Newfoundland  and  of  parts  of  Labrador.  Similar 
country  is  found  in  far  northern  Canada,  north  of  "the  land  of  little 
sticks,"  and  in  the  Tundra  of  Siberia.  In  summer  it  is  a  land  of  bog 
and  rock,  largely  treeless  except  where  the  depressions  give  shelter  to 
gnarled  and  dwarf  black  spruce  and  birch,  covered  in  places  with  hun- 
dreds of  shallow  little  flashets  of  water,  with  curiously  sharp  and  vertical 
edges  made  apparently  by  the  undisturbed  growth  through  centuries 
of  the  sedge  and  water-loving  plants  on  their  margins.  On  the  some- 
what drier  knolls,  there  is  a  thick  tufted  carpet  of  leatherleaf,  blue- 
berries, sheep  laurel,  and  mountain  cranberrj',  and  in  places  very  likely 
a  profusion  of  herbaceous  flowers,  whose  cousins  with  us  find  their 
time  of  bloom  from  May  to  October,  but  which  there  must  bloom 
almost  together  in  the  short  season  between  snow  and  snow.  It  is  a 
country  bright  and  cheerful  enough  in  its  occasional  sunshine,  but 
usually  even  in  summer  desolate  and  wind-beaten,  with  driving  fine 
rain  and  trailing  mist,  and  in  winter  snow-buried,  blizzard-swept,  or 

*  Cf.  Wilhelm  Miller,   The  Prairie  Spirit  in  Landscape  Gardening,  Circular  184 
of  the  Illinois  Agricultural  Experiment  Station,  Nov.  1915. 


66 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Sand  Dunes 


The  Sequoia 
Grove 


Still  and  silent  in  intense  cold,  offering  to  man  so  little  that  he  can 
either  use  or  destroy  that  it  will  probably  retain  its  present  character 
for  many  centuries  to  come. 

Sand  dunes  are  much  the  same  the  world  over,  for  the  natural 
conditions  which  bring  them  about  are  simple,  and  often  repeated. 
On  the  Atlantic  coast  of  the  United  States  there  are  many  places 
where  the  following  conditions  may  be  found.  There  may  be  an 
outer  steep  beach,  exposed  to  the  full  force  of  the  east  wind  and  the 
Atlantic  surf,  and  inland  a  stretch  of  pine  barrens,  or  perhaps  a  sand 
flat  running  off  into  the  shoal  water  of  a  bay  behind  the  barrier 
sand-spit,  where  the  shore-birds  come  in,  in  the  fall.  Behind  the  outer 
beach,  beyond  the  reach  of  the  tide,  is  a  country  of  toppling  sand-hills, 
gently  sloping  on  the  side  facing  the  east  wind,  sharply  scarped  to  the 
west,  perhaps  tufted  with  beach  grass  but  often  quite  bare,  and  for- 
ever shifting,  creeping  as  the  dry  sand  drifts  before  the  on-shore  wind. 
The  long  roots  of  the  beach  grass,  almost  the  only  vegetation,  will 
hold  a  sand-hillock  for  years,  but  if  once  the  grass  is  dislodged  and  the 
sand  is  exposed  to  the  full  sweep  of  the  wind,  a  hillock  may  disappear 
in  a  night  and  leave  a  hollow  where  it  has  been.  In  such  a  hollow 
among  the  dunes,  strewn  with  wisps  of  dry  seaweed,  perhaps  with  the 
ribs  of  some  long-buried  wreck  protruding  from  the  sand,  you  may  be 
glad  to  take  shelter  even  on  a  summer  day.  But  even  then  you  hear 
the  constant  hiss  of  the  wind  through  the  beach  grass,  the  whisper  of 
the  sand  pouring  over  the  leeward  face  of  the  nearby  dune,  the  un- 
escapable  undertone  of  the  surf.  And  every  form  which  the  incon- 
stant sand  assumes  is  the  evident  expression  of  the  wind  that  made  it. 

Many  a  landscape,  not  strongly  characterized  by  any  form  of  the 
ground,  takes  a  notable  character  from  the  vegetation  which  grows 
upon  it.  Such  a  character  will  of  course  be  found  repeated,  if  at  all, 
where  similar  soil  and  climate  conditions  make  similar  vegetation 
possible. 

When  your  pack-train  first  comes  out  of  the  manzanita  and  deer- 
brush  as  you  enter  a  Sequoia  grove  in  the  California  Sierras,  and  you 
see  close  at  hand  the  trunks  of  the  "Big  Trees"  (see  Plate  7),  you 
are  not  so  much  overpowered  by  their  size  as  perhaps  you  had  expected 
to  be.     It  is  only  when  you  see  a  man  on  horseback  beside  them,  or 


LANDSCAPE    CHARACTERS     67 

when  you  compare  with  them  the  trunks  of  the  six-foot  sugar  pines, 
which  elsewhere  you  had  looked  on  as  forest  monarchs,  that  the  size 
of  the  sequoias  begins  to  dawn  upon  you.  Where  these  great  trees 
stand  close,  the  ground  is  free  of  undergrowth  in  their  shade,  but  where 
the  sunshine  can  filter  through  to  the  forest  floor,  there  may  be  groups 
of  smaller  trees  and  shrubs,  dwarfed  and  insignificant  in  relation  to 
the  sequoias,  but  forcing  the  party  to  wind  about  among  them  with 
the  pack  animals,  seeking  a  level  open  place  for  a  camp.  Perhaps  it  is 
late  afternoon  when  you  reach  the  little  bench  or  basin  in  the  moun- 
tainside where  the  "Big  Trees"  are  gro^\^ng,  and  the  sun  has  already 
sunk  behind  a  ridge  to  the  west.  The  trunks  of  the  great  yellow  pines, 
sugar  pines,  and  Douglas  firs,  perhaps  a  hundred  feet  high  and  six  in 
diameter,  stand  in  the  growing  dusk  swaying  slightly  in  the  evening 
wind,  but  above  their  heads,  borne  on  red-brown  trunks  immovable 
as  stone  towers,  the  short  heavy  gnarled  branches  and  the  close-massed 
foliage  of  the  sequoias,  green-gold  against  the  darkening  blue  of  the 
zenith,  still  catch  the  evening  light.  It  may  aid  your  understanding 
to  know  that  these  trees  were  much  as  they  now  are  when  the  Norse- 
men first  set  foot  on  this  continent,  that  they  were  old  when  Caesar  was 
born ;  but  even  without  such  helps  to  the  imagination,  these  trees  have 
a  majestic  —  even  an  awe-inspiring  —  quality  which  is  more  usually 
the  effect  of  great  mountains  or  of  the  sea  :  you  feel  a  sense  at  the 
same  time  of  your  own  utter  insignificance  and  yet  of  your  being  a 
part  of  a  vast,  solemn,  ordered,  and  inevitable  scheme.* 

Any  one  traveling  in  the  High  Sierras  inevitably  seeks  out  the  The  Sierra 
location  of  the  mountain  meadows  for  the  reason  that  there,  and  often  Mountain 
only  there,  can  be  found  sufficient  feed  for  his  animals  ;  but  beside  that 
use,  such  a  meadow  is  in  itself  extremely  beautiful,  with  a  fairly  definite 
characteristic  beauty. f  (See  Plate  8.)  It  may  lie  so  close  to  the 
peaks  as  to  occupy  the  old  glacier  cirque  at  the  head  of  a  mountain 
valley,  free  from  snow  only  a  few  months  of  the  year,  or  it  may  lie  any- 
where along  the  course  of  the  stream  where  a  landslide  may  have  made 
a  dam  and  so  eventually  a  flat  of  deposited  loam.     In  any  case  the 

*  Cf.   Lafcadio   Hearn  quotation,    Chapter  VI,   p.  80.     Also    see    chapter,    The 
Sequoia  and  General  Grant  National  Parks,  in  John  Muir's  Our  National  Parks  (1901). 
t  Cf.  The  Wild  Gardens  of  the  Yosemite  Park,  Muir,  ibid. 


68  LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


striking  character  of  the  mountain  meadow  is  the  contrast  of  its  brilliant 
green  open  level  with  the  barren  ragged  rocks  or  with  the  brown  fallen 
needles  under  the  dark  firs  of  the  surrounding  slopes,  —  a  contrast 
which  gives  a  special  value  to  the  lushness  of  the  plant  growth  — 
grass  and  sedge  and  veratrum  —  tall  in  the  midst  of  the  meadow  where 
the  sun  has  lain  for  long,  and  just  springing  from  the  ground  at  the 
foot  of  the  retreating  snow  drift  on  the  southern  side  of  the  deep  valley 
or  in  the  shade  of  the  trees.  After  a  long  day  of  travel  you  may  come, 
toward  evening,  to  the  edge  of  such  a  meadow.  You  unpack  and  un- 
saddle your  animals  and  turn  them  loose,  to  roll  and  then  to  start 
leisurely  and  comfortably  to  feed.  After  your  camp  is  set  and  your 
supper  under  way,  you  sit  and  smoke  and  watch  the  long  shadows  of 
the  outstanding  groups  of  taller  pines  stretch  across  the  meadow,  and 
the  smoke  of  your  fire  make  a  level  film  across  the  open  as  the  first 
gentle  cold  drift  of  evening  wind  from  the  snows  carries  it  down  the 
valley.  You  hear  the  gurgle  of  the  stream  near  your  camp,  winding 
from  pool  to  pool  between  steep  earth  banks  in  the  flat,  and  perhaps  a 
whisper  from  a  distant  fall  in  the  same  stream  where  it  comes  down 
from  the  snows  over  the  cliff  which  heads  the  valley.  It  is  hard  to 
imagine  that  anywhere  there  is  a  natural  landscape  which  has  more 
completely  an  expression  of  peace  and  protection  and  rest. 
The  Bushy  In  one  fundamental  way  the  "free  landscape"  to  which  most  of  us 

Pasture  ^^^  accustomed  diflfers  from  the  examples  which  we  have  just  been  dis- 

cussing. Although  man  has  not  interfered  with  our  ordinary  country 
landscape  with  the  primary  intention  of  changing  its  esthetic  appear- 
ance, yet  man's  activities  for  other  purposes  have  to  a  greater  or  less 
degree  resulted  in  a  distinct  landscape  character.  Take,  for  instance, 
the  case  of  the  New  England  bushy  pasture.*  When  the  white  man 
came,  the  land  where  now  the  pasture  lies  was  probably  woodland. 
It  may  have  been  cleared  for  purposes  of  pasturage,  or  it  may  have 
been  tilled  for  some  generations  after  the  pioneers  first  cleared  it,  and 
then,  with  the  abandonment  of  so  many  of  the  New  England  farms, 
reverted  to  the  less  intensive  use  of  pasturage.  Where  the  cattle  have 
grazing  ground  enough,  and  where  man  has  not  expended  the  energy 

*  See  a  section  of  Charles  Eliot's  Vegetation  and  Scenery  in  the  Metropolitan  Reser- 
vations, 1897,  reprinted  in  Charles  Eliot,  Landscape  Architect,  pp.  727-729. 


LANDSCAPE    CHARACTERS 69 

to  keep  the  area  entirely  in  grass,  such  trees  and  shrubs  have  found 
their  way  in  as  can  protect  themselves  against  the  browsing  cattle. 
In  New  England  these  plants  are  noticeably  the  thorny  and  bitter 
things  like  wild  rose  and  barbern.-  and  juniper  and  red  cedar;  and 
perhaps  hawthorns,  wild  apples,  and  other  hardy  trees.  First  in  this 
invasion  by  the  forest  come  the  roses  and  the  red  cedars,  which  the  cattle 
can  hardly  browse  upon  at  all.  When  a  thicket  of  such  material  has 
established  itself,  other  plants  like  shad-bush  or  hawthorn  will  grow 
in  the  midst  of  it,  protected  by  it  from  the  cattle ;  or  at  times  plants 
like  wild  apples  will  spring  up  in  the  open,  and  though  eaten  down 
ever}'  year  will  gradually  grow  into  so  wide  a  mass  that  finally  from 
its  center,  out  of  reach  of  the  cattle,  a  vertical  stem  will  start  and  bear 
a  head  of  foliage,  so  producing  a  series  of  conical  and  afterwards  vase- 
like forms.  This  particular  group  of  circumstances,  in  which  man's 
activity  is  a  factor,  results  in  an  automatic  choice  of  the  plant  materials 
in  the  composition  and  a  consequent  production  of  repeated  and  fairly 
definite  plant  forms,  enframing  and  diversifying  what  remains  of  the 
pasture,  giving  a  definite  and  recognizable  landscape  character,  and 
often  great  pictorial  beauty.  The  pastures  most  neglected  are  those 
outlying  on  the  higher  slopes  of  the  hills,  and  so  the  typical  bushy  pas- 
ture which  the  name  calls  to  mind  lies  high  above  the  orchards  and  mead- 
ows of  the  valley,  framed  by  the  oak  and  birch  and  maple  of  the  "wood 
lot,"  scattered  with  outcropping  lichened  ledges  warm  in  the  sun,  and 
patches  of  sweet-scented  fern,  and  hardhack  and  brambles  concealing  the 
old  stone  walls,  —  a  landscape  plainly  once  the  work  of  man,  but  so  far 
received  back  by  nature  that  man's  interference  is  no  longer  an  incon- 
gruity, but    rather  an  added  pleasure  of  association.     (See  Plate  9.) 

The  English  pastoral  landscape,  like  the  New  England  pasture,  English 
had  its  origin  in  the  clearing  of  land  for  economic  use,  but  the  land  P^^^'^'^'^ 
was  thereafter  thoroughly  kept  up  and  made  as  efficient  as  possible  for 
a  pasture,  old  large  trees  being  preserved,  or  new  trees  being  planted, 
singly  or  in  groups,  scattered  throughout  the  rich  grassland,  to  furnish 
shade  for  the  animals.  The  foliage  of  these  trees  which  is  within  the 
reach  of  browsing  cattle  is  ven.'  usually  destroyed  by  them,  and  thus  is 
produced  a  "browsing  line"  parallel  to  the  undulating  ground  surface, 
a  unifying  element  in  the  composition,  in  a  sense  unnatural  but  not 


7^ LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

always  displeasing.  The  lower  land,  being  the  better  soil,  is  usually 
that  chosen  for  open  pasture,  while  the  knolls  and  higher  lands  are 
crowned  with  trees.  The  short-cropped  turf  displays  to  the  full  the 
gentle  undulations  of  the  ground,  accented  by  the  long  shadows  of  the 
isolated  trees  and  enframed  by  the  adjacent  woodland.  The  esthetic 
possibilities  of  these  compositions  of  forest  edge  and  free-standing  trees 
and  turfed  ground  surface  appealed  to  the  English  people,  and  in  the 
parks  of  the  great  English  estates  (see  Plate  lo)  this  pastoral  land- 
scape character  was  copied,  intentionally  for  its  esthetic  effect,  as  a 
landscape  style,  which  on  account  of  its  adaptability  to  so  many  of 
man's  uses  still  forms  the  basis  of  much  of  our  modern  park  and  private 
place  design.  In  studying  such  landscapes  as  this  we  find  ourselves  in 
a  border  land,  where  it  is  sometimes  a  matter  of  academic  definition 
rather  than  one  of  important  distinction  to  say  whether  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  scene  should  be  called  style  or  character. 

The  landscapes  which  we  have  briefly  discussed  have  depended 
primarily  for  their  character  some  on  ground  form,  some  on  vegetation, 
some,  in  a  relatively  slight  degree,  upon  the  hand  of  man.  Further 
consideration  of  landscape  character  particularly  as  it  is  affected  by 
ground  forms  will  be  found  in  Chapter  VIII :  Natural  Forms  of  Ground, 
Rock,  and  Water  as  Elements  in  Design.  These  examples  of  landscape 
characters  are  but  a  few  out  of  a  great  number,  not  necessarily  the  most 
important,  but  given  because  they  are  typical  of  many,  and  because 
the  character  in  each  case  is  distinctive  and  striking.  Each  student 
of  landscape  will  have  his  own  field  of  experience  in  this  regard,  and  he 
may  learn  reverence  for  Nature  and  gain  information  for  use  in  his 
own  designs  from  any  considerable  experience  of  Nature's  works,  in 
whatever  part  of  the  globe  he  may  have  obtained  it.* 
Design  in  The  greater  and  more  striking  examples  of  Nature's  handiwork  will 

Landscape  serve  the  designer  as  inspiration  and  as  training  in  appreciation,  and 

he  may  by  his  knowledge  of  their  peculiar  value  to  the  race  have  the 
duty  and  the  great  opportunity  of  defending  them  from   destruction. 

*  See  Frederick  Law  Olmsted,  Sr.'s,  application  of  ideas  from  tropical  scenery 
to  the  planting  of  portions  of  Central  Park,  in  a  letter  to  Mr.  Ignaz  A.  Pilat,  1863, 
published  in  Landscape  Architecticre,  April,  1915,  v.  5,  pp.  124-133,  under  the  title  The 
Esthetic  Value  of  Tropical  Scenery. 


LANDSCAPE    CHARACTERS Jl 

But  the  humbler  and  less  striking  characters  will  be  those  to  which  he 
will  usually  go  for  models  and  for  materials  in  his  designs,  since  these 
will  be  the  forms  most  commonly  h'ing  near  the  homes  of  the  city- 
bred  people  for  whom  he  works.  His  work  will  be  on  a  small  scale 
relatively  to  the  great  free  landscape ;  the  character  which  he  will 
endeavor  to  produce  will  be  of  a  less  striking  sort,  and  it  will  there- 
fore be  doubly  necessary  for  him  to  make  the  expression  of  this  char- 
acter as  complete,  as  unified,  and  as  distinct  as  possible.  He  must  be 
sensitive  to  feel  what  character  is  latent  in  the  more  or  less  inchoate 
scene  on  which  he  is  called  to  work ;  he  must  know  what  of  the  ele- 
ments now  present  are  masking  this  character,  and  should  be  removed  ; 
he  must  know  what  can  be  added  to  perfect  it  without  confusing  it. 
But  his  duty  as  an  artist  is  not  accomplished  -even  when  he  has  achieved 
this  success  :  he  is  bound  also  by  other  laws.  He  must  so  arrange  his 
natural  materials  that,  while  they  express  the  natural  character  of  the 
landscape,  they  also  produce  harmonies  of  form,  of  color,  of  texture, 
harmonies  of  repetition  and  sequence  and  balance.*  His  designs 
must  be,  as  far  as  is  humanly  possible,  both  interpretations  of  natural 
character  and  effective  pictorial  compositions.     (See  Plate  21.) 

Where  the  landscape  architect  is  dealing  with  designs  of  any  con- 
siderable size,  like  parks,  or  large  private  estates,  he  cannot  treat  the 
area  as  one  visual  unit.  Within  his  total  area  he  must  seize  upon 
smaller  unities ;  and  therefore  he  will  endeavor  to  develop  each  impor- 
tant view  as  a  pictorial  composition,  and  at  the  same  time  he  will  en- 
hance and  differentiate  the  individual  landscape  character  of  each 
separate  and  subordinate  unit  of  his  whole  design.  He  will  make  a 
pine  wood  in  one  place,  an  oak  wood  in  another;  here  he  will  steepen 
his  brook  to  make  a  cataract,  there  restrain  it  to  make  a  pool.  He 
will  cut  out  a  group  of  trees  in  one  place  which  interrupts  the  openness 
of  his  valley  floor,  and  he  will  plant  trees  in  another  place  to  segregate 
a  little  woodland  pool  from  the  rest  of  the  landscape.  To  increase  the 
apparent  height  of  a  rocky  ledge,  he  will  remove  debris  from  its  base, 
and  perhaps  destroy  some  large  and  coarse-leaved  plants  and  replace 
them  with  small  rock-loving  ferns  appropriate  to  the  situation  and 
enhancing  the  naturalness,  the  scale,   and  the  beauty  of  the  ledge; 

*  Cf.  Chapter  VII,  p.  89. 


72 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Landscape 
Characters  in 
Relation  to 
Economic  Use 
and  Main- 
tenance 


and  the  various  different  and  perfected  landscape  characters,  properly 
related,  will  greatly  aid  each  other  in  the  final  effect  of  the  whole  de- 
sign on  the  observer,  perhaps  by  contrast  of  characters,  perhaps  by  a 
culmination  of  effects  which  brings  the  attention  well  prepared  to  the 
most  important  object  or  view  which  the  whole  scheme  may  offer. 

When  natural  scenery  is  preserved  or  re-created  by  man,  not  wholly 
as  something  to  be  looked  at,  but  at  least  in  part  for  some  other  use, 
the  choice  of  the  designer  as  to  what  characters  shall  make  up  the  total 
character  of  his  design  is  much  limited.  For  example,  a  municipal 
forest  may  well  serve  the  community  which  owns  it  in  three  ways  :  as 
a  cover  and  shade  and  protection  for  the  catchment  area  of  the  munici- 
pal water  supply,  as  a  source  of  supply  for  timber,  and  as  a  recreation 
place  where  approximately  natural  scenery  may  be  enjoyed.  These 
three  uses  are  not  necessarily  incompatible,  but  the  exact  method  of 
use  in  each  case  must  be  worked  out  with  the  other  two  uses  also  in 
mind.  The  trees  which  are  planted  for  forestry  purposes  must  of 
course  be  those  of  the  greatest  market  value,  those  that  produce  the 
most,  and  the  most  valuable  timber,  in  the  shortest  possible  time.  They 
must  be  so  set  out  and  so  cut  that  this  timber  may  be  sent  to  market 
when  it  is  at  its  maximum  value  and  in  the  most  economical  way. 
Nevertheless  it  should  be  possible  in  a  forest  of  any  size  and  variation 
of  topography  to  plant  several  different  kinds  of  trees,  perhaps  plant- 
ing evergreens  on  the  higher  land  and  deciduous  trees  in  the  river 
bottoms,  and  choosing  the  outlines  of  the  different  stands  of  timber 
so  that  they  shall  develop  rather  than  obscure  the  various  landscape 
units  suggested  by  the  ground.  It  should  be  possible  to  preserve  or 
to  plant,  along  the  rivers  and  along  the  main  roads,  about  the  places 
where  people  would  principally  congregate  to  enjoy  a  view,  trees  purely 
for  the  sake  of  appearance,  studied  entirely  for  their  enhancement  of 
the  natural  character,  and  allowed  to  grow  old  and  perhaps  to  replace 
themselves  in  natural  close-growing  groups,  purposely  sacrificing  the 
commercial  value  of  the  timber  which  is  thus  kept  out  of  the  market. 
It  might  be  possible,  even  in  that  part  of  the  forest  which  was  handled 
as  a  commercial  asset,  so  to  regulate  the  spacing  of  the  trees,  so  to  en- 
courage certain  types  of  undergrowth,  that  while  the  timber  could  still 
be  economically  cut,  it  would  not  produce  an  effect  of  stupid  artificiality. 


LANDSCAPE     CHARACTERS 73 

Again,  in  marketing  the  timber,  it  might  often  be  possible  so  to  choose 
the  areas  for  the  successive  cuttings  that  at  no  one  time  would  any- 
considerable  portion  of  the  forest  be  entirely  denuded  of  trees.  More- 
over if  the  difTerent  kinds  of  trees  were,  as  we  have  said,  largely  con- 
fined each  to  its  own  landscape  unit,  the  cuttings  would  not  destroy 
these  units  by  leaving  them  partly  wooded  and  partly  open,  but  would 
simply  throw  out  of  commission  for  recreation  purposes  a  succession 
of  landscape  units,  but  only  a  few  at  any  one  time.  Where  the  appear- 
ance of  the  landscape  is  much  the  dominant  factor,  a  mixed  stand  of 
trees  might  be  handled,  and  the  trees  cut  singly  as  they  reach  maturity, 
thus  at  no  time  completely  destroying  any  of  the  forest  cover. 

Where  parts  of  the  ground  are  to  be  used  by  large  numbers  of 
people,  the  forester  must  bear  this  in  mind  in  choosing  for  these  areas 
trees  which  will  endure  the  destructive  effect  of  trampling  upon  the 
ground  and  the  undergrowth.  And  the  landscape  designer  must  take 
this  circumstance  into  account  in  arranging  his  designs  and  the  regu- 
lations for  the  use  of  the  area,  so  that  the  crowds  of  people  will  be  led 
to  use  those  areas  which  are  designed  to  receive  them,  and  kept  away 
from  those  areas  where  their  presence  in  numbers  will  do  great  damage.* 
In  considering  this  factor  of  crowds,  the  landscape  designer  will  find 
that  he  is  much  restricted  by  it  in  the  kinds  of  landscape  character 
which  he  may  hope  to  create  and  maintain.  A  hemlock  forest  shading 
a  steep  little  gorge  with  a  gravelly  brook  overhung  with  ferns,  perhaps 
with  trillium  and  wild  geraniums  near  the  brook,  and  lady's  slippers 
further  back  under  the  trees,  might  be  a  landscape  character  natural 
to  the  locality,  natural  to  the  topography,  and  beautiful  in  itself;  but 
if  it  is  to  be  walked  over  by  thousands  of  people  daily,  no  amount  of 
policing,  no  amount  of  upkeep  will  save  it  from  destruction.  The  de- 
signer must  therefore  choose  such  characters  for  the  separate  units  of 
his  larger  design  that  with  the  amount  of  money  available  for  policing 
and  upkeep,  each  character  can  be  effectively  maintained. 

Again  the  designer's  choice  of  landscape  character  in  park  or  private 
place  is  motived  by  what  he  knows  is  possible  in  the  way  of  future 
control  of  plant  growth.  It  often  happens  that  the  size  of  the  place 
on  which  the  landscape  designer  is  working  necessitates  his  exemplify- 

*  Cf.  Landscape  Parks,  Chapter  XI. 


74 


Value  and 

Preservation 
of  Character- 
istic Scenery 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

ing  the  natural  characters  which  he  is  producing  at  a  somewhat  reduced 
scale,  and  this  may  be  successfully  done  if  the  growth  of  the  vegetation 
be  watched  and  kept  within  bounds,  if  certain  less  hardy  plants  desir- 
able for  the  total  effect  be  protected  from  the  encroachments  of  their 
faster-growing  and  stronger  neighbors.  If  the  care  and  skill  necessary 
for  this  upkeep  are  not  to  be  forthcoming,  then  the  designer  must  choose 
a  landscape  character  perhaps  less  interesting,  but  which  at  least  may 
be  kept  approximately  in  its  correct  expression  with  the  amount  of  care 
that  will  actually  be  afforded.  And  this  simpler  thing  well  done  will 
be  infinitely  preferable  to  the  ineffective  and  shabby  confusion  which 
would  result  from  the  more  ambitious  design  in  its  neglected  state. 

As  man  has  increased  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  as  he  has  irrigated 
and  tilled  the  deserts,  as  he  has  destroyed  the  forests  to  make  his 
buildings  and  in  their  stead  placed  his  farms  and  his  cities,  the  amount 
of  actually  wild  landscape  has  decreased,  and  in  our  time  it  is  decreas- 
ing at  an  enormously  accelerated  rate,  so  that  the  unhampered  expres- 
sions   of   nature's   forces    which    were   once    the   common,  almost  the 
inevitable,  environment  of  man,  remain  only  in  inaccessible  and  inhos- 
pitable places,  and  even  there  they  are  rapidly  passing  away  before  the 
blind  destructive  forces  of  man's  enterprise.     A  possession  of  inestim- 
able value  to  mankind,*  which  once  was  so  common  that  it  went  un- 
heeded, is  now  becoming  in  our  country  so  rare  that  we  are  beginning 
to  appreciate  its  preciousness ;    and  the  responsibility  rests  upon  us, 
especially  upon  our  landscape  architects,  as  it  has  never  rested  upon 
any  generation  of  men  before,  to  see  to  it  that  the  scattered  remnants 
of  natural  character  and  natural  beauty,  which  we  still  have  left  to  us, 
are  preserved  for  the  recreation  and  Inspiration  of  the  generations  to 
come.     (See  Frontispiece  and  Plates  7  and  14.)     This  is  not  a  duty 
that  can  be  put  upon  the  shoulders  of  our  successors  :   the  destruction 
of  this  natural  beauty  is  imminent ;    unless  it  is  definitely  controlled, 
it  is  inevitable;    and  once  destroyed,  once  put  into  the  possession  of 
man  and  adapted  to  his  uses,  this  beauty  in  its  highest  manifestations 
is  destroyed  forever,  and  no  late  repentance,  no  expenditure  of  money, 
however  great,  will  bring  back  to  our  successors  what  we  can  now  so 
*  Cf.  F.  L.  Olmsted,  Sr.'s,  remarks,  p.  no  ff.,  of  his  Public  Parks,  1902  reprint. 
(See  References.) 


LANDSCAPE    CHARACTERS 75 

readily  acquire  and  so  easily  preserve.  All  land  at  present  unoccupied 
cannot  of  course  be  preserved  in  this  way.  Nearly  all  of  it  must  and 
should  be  devoted  to  man's  uses,  and  must  therefore  forever  after  ex- 
press man's  will,  more  than  nature's  character.  But  in  every  state  of 
our  union  *  there  are  considerable  areas  of  land  of  such  a  character 
and  so  situated  that  the  greatest  service  they  can  render  to  the  com- 
munity for  as  far  in  the  future  as  we  can  predict,  is  to  furnish  to  the 
people  an  opportunity  for  satisfying,  as  far  as  may  be,  a  fundamental 
need  which  exists  at  least  in  some  degree  in  every  human  being. 

Man,  as  a  city-dweller,  man  living  among  dominantly  man-made  Man's  Need 
surroundings,  is  comparatively  a  new  thing  in  the  long  history  of  the  °I  f' 
earth.  The  great  racial  inheritances  of  modern  man  come  to  him 
from  beings  who  have  lived  as  tenants  on  sufferance  in  a  world  ruled  by 
the  powers  of  untouched  nature.  Moreover,  man  is  himself  only  one 
manifestation  of  the  powers  which  give  form  and  substance  also  to 
animals,  to  trees,  to  mountains.  It  is  not  remarkable,  then,  that  even 
modern  city-bred  men  should  find  something  in  wild  nature  which 
seems  to  fulfill  and  complete  their  being.  So  long  as  man  leads  an  out- 
door existence  which  gives  him  some  contact  with  nature,  even  though 
not  with  wild  nature,  this  fundamental  need  may  be  sufficiently  met. 
But  the  modern  city-dwelling  race  of  men,  if  it  is  to  exist  at  all  for  any 
length  of  time,  must  obtain  in  unspoiled  landscape  some  relief  from 
insistent  man-made  conditions.  And  such  men  as  have  any  ability  to 
feel  their  kinship  with  the  outdoor  world  must  get  from  nature  more 
than  this  simple  relief  from  physical  oppression.  They  must  have  the 
opportunity  of  allowing  their  imagination  to  lose  itself  in  the  infinitely 
complicated,  magnificent,  and  ordered  whole  of  which  they  are  a  part, 
and  the  glory  of  which  is  their  rightful  heritage. 

*  Cf.  State  and  National  Parks  and  Reservations  in  Chapter  XI,  p.  321. 


CHAPTER  VI 

LANDSCAPE  EFFECTS 

Taste  in  landscape  effects  —  Variety  of  landscape  effects  —  Literary  dis- 
cussions OF  LANDSCAPE  EFFECTS ThE  "bEAUTIFUl"  AND  THE  "  PICTURESQUE" 

—  Their  fundamental  difference  —  Their  application  in  design  —  Examples  of 
OTHER  EFFECTS  —  Sublimity  —  Desolation  —  Melancholy  — Gayety  —  Mystery 

—  Effects  from  transitory  conditions  —  Harmony  and  contrast  in  effects  — 
Effects  in  landscape  characters  —  Effects  in  styles  —  Design  in  effects. 

The  total  reaction  which  the  perception  of  a  landscape  may  have 
upon  a  man,  we  have  called  landscape  effect.  Any  landscape  effect 
is  made  up  in  part  of  some  kind  of  emotional  response  in  the  observer, 
and  it  is  this  emotion  alone  which  makes  the  effect  interesting  and 
which  gives  value  —  in  the  eyes  of  the  observer  —  to  the  landscape 
which  is  the  immediate  cause  of  the  effect.  It  is  the  effect  of  a  land- 
scape, and  particularly  the  emotional  component  in  this  effect,  by  which 
the  worth  of  the  character  or  of  the  style  of  the  landscape  must  ulti- 
mately be  judged.  And  in  this  effect  alone,  to  the  mind  of  the  de- 
signer, style  and  character  and  all  the  characteristics  of  the  landscape 
must  find  their  ultimate  esthetic  justification. 
Taste  in  The  constitution  of  the  minds  of  different  men  will  make  them  dif- 

Landscape  ferently  sensitive  to  landscape  effects* :  not  only  will  one  man  be  pro- 

Ejfects  foundly  moved  by  a  landscape  which  impresses  another  only  slightly, 

but  one  man  may  get  great  pleasure  from  a  landscape  which  to  another 
man  is  distinctly  distasteful.  In  this  way  the  innate  sensitiveness  of 
one  man  to  certain  kinds  of  landscape  effects  will  make  him,  in  judging 
a  landscape  which  he  sees,  use  a  scale  of  values  not  at  all  in  accord  with 
the  ideas  of  another  man  of  a  different  type  of  mind.  Thus  the  whole 
matter  of  landscape  effects  appears  as  a  matter  of  taste  and  is  individual 
to  the  same  extent  that  taste  is  individual. 

*  Cf.  Sitwell,  An  Essay  on  the  Making  of  Gardens,  p.  40-43. 

76 


LANDSCAPE    EFFECTS y? 

Landscape  effects  are  as  various  as  the  scenes  which  cause  them,  Variety  of 
as  various  as  the  men  who  behold  the  scenes,  but  out  of  this  infinity  l^^j}dscafe 
of  observations  men  have  found  that  certain  fairly  definite  kinds  of 
emotional  experience  can  be  distinguished  and  named  and  discussed. 
The  names  which  we  find  ourselves  using  for  landscape  effects  are  really 
never  very  exact  in  meaning,  and  are  merely  names  for  a  dominant 
emotional  result  which,  being  present  in  a  number  of  experiences, 
makes  them  sufficiently  alike  to  be  talked  of  as  a  class. 

The  writers  of  the  late  eighteenth  century  put  great  emphasis  on  Literary 
the  value  of  effects  in  design,  and  carried  the  discussion  and  classifica-  Discussions  of 
tion  of  effects  into  considerable  detail ;   in  the  latter  part  of  the  period.  Effects 
indeed,  carrying  it  to  extremes.     We  find  in  various  writings  of  the 
period  a  stereotyped  enumeration  of  certain  effects  as  pertaining  to 
certain  scenes,  and  in  some  of  the  designs  which  these  writings  influ- 
enced, Romantic  symbolism  was  carried  to  absurdity.*     A  great  many 
different  effects  were  recognized.     Some  of  them,  simply   designated 
by  the  name  of  the  emotion  which  they  caused,  were  definite  enough  to 
be  discussed  without   confusion.     But  the  more   subtle   and   compli- 
cated effects  were  differently  felt  and  differently  named  by  the  various 
writers,  with  the  result  that  a  considerable  confusion  and  much  vigorous 
discussion  arose  because  of  lack  of  definition  of  terms. 

Two  categories  of  effects,  however,  stand  out  as  being  of  particular  The  "Beauti- 
importance  in  all  this   discussion  :  —  on  the  one    hand,   those  effects  1"^"  ^^'^  '^^ 
which   are   associated   with   smooth   and   rounded  objects,   with   soft-  fsque" 
textured  surfaces,  with  flowing  lines,  with  sequential  arrangements  of 
form,  —  scenes,  that  is,  in  which  the  attention  passes  from  object  to 
object  easily,  by  short  stages,  without  sudden  arresting  of  the  atten- 
tion by  any  object  in  the  composition ;    on  the  other  hand,  those  ef-  Their 
fects  which  are  associated  with  violent  contrast  of  light  and  shade,  of  ^""'^^'"'"'"^ 
color,  of  form,  with  harsh  and  coarse  textures,  with  angular  shapes, 
and  with  very  individual  objects,  —  scenes   in   which  the  interest  is 
powerfully  attracted  by  the  characteristics  of  the  objects,  and  where 
the  attention  passes,  as  it  were,  by  a  sudden  leap  from  one  feature  in 

*  See  Chapter  IV",  section  on  the  Romantic  landscape  style  (p.  45).  Compare 
the  description  of  a  garden  designed  to  produce  a  series  of  violently  contrasting  emo- 
tions given  in  Triggs,  Garden  Craft  in  Europe,  1913,  p.  304-305.      (See  References.) 


78 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

the  composition  to  another.  The  first  of  these  two  classes  was  rather 
generally  called  the  beautiful,  the  second  the  picturesque.  In  our 
modern  parlance,  beauty  is  no  longer  thus  considered  as  a  kind  of 
effect,  our  estheticians  looking  upon  beauty  as  arising  from  the  per- 
fection of  organization  rather  than  from  the  kind  of  organization  of  a 
composition.  The  term  picturesque,  meaning  at  first  merely  causing 
such  an  effect  as  might  be  produced  by  a  picture,  came,  when  used  in 
the  sense  which  we  have  just  explained,  to  be  endowed  with  a  much 
more  specific  meaning  not  inherent  in  the  word.  In  our  present  speech 
much  of  this  acquired  meaning  has  been  again  lost,  and  the  word  is 
used  more  in  its  simpler  sense,  although  some  of  the  associational  flavor 
remains,  as  in  the  antithesis  of  "picturesque"  to  "pastoral"  scenery 
in  some  discussions  of  park  design. 
Their  As  a  practical  consideration  in  design,  however,  these  two  different 

Application  classes  of  effects  are  as  important  now  as  they  were  then.  (Compare 
Plate  21  with  Plate  12,  and  Drawing  XXV,  opp.  p.  196,  with  Drawing 
XXVI,  opp.  p.  198.)  On  the  one  hand,  many  scenes,  of  effects  different  in 
subordinate  ways,  may  be  grouped  together,  and  may  be  felt  as  being, 
as  it  were,  emotionally  similar,  if  their  total  effect  is  restful,  calm, 
peaceful,  depending  on  a  smooth  flow  of  attention.  Such  effects  are 
produced  through  association,  for  instance,  by  pastoral  landscape. 
Through  the  more  direct  agency  of  form,  they  are  produced  by  the 
flowing  curves  of  rolling  grassland,  or  of  a  slowly  winding  river;  by 
the  rounded  masses  of  low  hills  or  of  well-grown  round-headed  deciduous 
trees  ;  or  by  the  just  proportions  of  a  classic  temple.  The  beauties  of 
such  scenes  come  to  the  observer  slowly :  no  pressing  demand  is  made 
upon  his  attention,  and  only  through  contemplation  or  repeated  ob- 
servation does  he  become  aware  of  the  full  charm  of  the  landscape  be- 
fore him.  Such  a  scene  has  from  the  first  a  peculiar  restfulness,  and  is 
not  likely  to  lose  its  appeal  even  when  it  becomes  thoroughly  familiar. 
On  the  other  hand,  an  emotional  unity  may  similarly  be  felt  among 
scenes  or  objects  which  through  their  Romantic  association  or  their 
association  with  violent  manifestations  of  the  forces  of  nature,  or 
through  their  striking  form  or  character,  make  a  powerful  immediate 
appeal  to  the  interest,  and  either  draw  the  attention  strongly  from  ob- 
ject to  object  or  concentrate  it  intensely  on  one  point.     Such  a  scene 


LANDSCAPE    EFFECTS 


79 


might  be,  in  extreme  terms,  the  landscape  of  shattered  crag  and  wind- 
distorted  trees  of  the  smuggler's  pass  in  Carmen  or  of  the  Wolf's  Glen  in 
Der  Freischutz;  or  of  the  Matterhorn,  or  Mont  St.  Michel,  or  the 
great  structure  with  its  giant  Hercules  crowning  the  hillside  vista  at 
Wilhelmshohe ;  or,  in  less  striking  manifestation,  a  little  rocky  glen 
with  a  tumbling  waterfall,  or  a  hilltop  ledge  with  a  single  gnarled  pine.* 

Just  as  these  two  large  and  fundamentally  diiferent  effects  have  Examples  of 
been  recognized  by  critics  and  designers,  so  out  of  the  multitude  of  ^^^^''  Effects 
effects  an  indefinite  number  of  others,  of  varjang  distinctness  and  of 
varying  importance,  have  also  been  recognized.     In  this  chapter  we 
shall  discuss  a  few  of  these  effects,  which  on  account  of  their  common 
appeal  to  all  observers  have  more  or  less  definite  names  and  values. 

Sublimity,  grandeur,  in  landscape  is  commonly  the  result  of  the  Sublimity 
perception  of  the  vast  size  or  power  or  duration  of  the  manifestations 
of  nature  in  comparison  with  the  insignificance  of  man.  It  is  most 
commonly  produced  therefore  by  the  extent  of  the  landscape,  or  the 
size  of  some  object  in  it,  —  a  great  cliff  or  a  range  of  mountains,  or 
a  vast  plain  or  the  sea,  or  perhaps  a  forest  of  giant  trees.  (See  Frontis- 
piece and  Plates  7,  13,  and  23.)  It  will  be  enhanced  by,  indeed  it  will 
not  be  effected  without,  some  means  of  measuring  the  actual  size  of 

*  "The  different  effects  which  art  is  able  to  produce,  however  various  and  incom- 
mensurable they  may  radically  be,  are  commensurable  at  least  in  this :  that  each  in 
some  degree  makes  a  demand  on  our  attention.  Some  works  of  art  affect  us,  as  it  were, 
by  infiltration,  and  are  calculated  to  produce  an  impression  that  is  slow,  pervasive  and 
profound.  These  seek  neither  to  capture  the  attention  nor  to  retain  it,  yet  they  satisfy 
it  when  it  is  given.  Other  works  arrest  us,  and  by  a  sharp  attack  upon  the  senses  or 
the  curiosity  insist  on  our  surrender.  Their  function  is  to  stimulate  and  excite.  But 
since,  as  is  well  known,  we  cannot  long  react  to  a  stimulus  of  this  type,  it  is  essential  that 
the  attention  should,  in  these  cases,  be  soon  enough  released.  Otherwise,  held  captive 
and  provoked,  we  are  confronted  with  an  insistent  appeal  which,  since  we  can  no  longer 
respond  to  it,  must  become  in  time  fatiguing  or  contemptible. 

"Of  these  two  types  of  esthetic  appeal,  each  commands  its  own  dominion; 
neither  is  essentially  superior  to  the  other,  although,  since  men  tend  to  set  a  higher 
value  on  that  which  satisfies  them  longest,  it  is  art  of  the  former  kind  which  has  most 
often  been  called  great.  But  they  do  both  possess  an  essential  fitness  to  different 
occasions." 

Geoffrey  Scott,  The  Architecture  of  Humanism :  a  Study  in  the  History  of  Taste, 
1914,  p.  83-84. 


8o LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

the  objects  beheld,  that  is,  some  means  of  determining  their  scale  re- 
lation with  a  man.* 

It  is  proverbially  but  a  step  from  the  sublime  to  the  ridiculous, 
and  it  is  true  in  landscape  design  that  the  sublimity  of  a  great  view  may 
be  much  injured  by  a  mean  and  impertinent  foreground,  or  by  the 
inclusion  within  the  view  of  anything  which  would  tend  to  rouse  in  the 
beholder's  mind  a  train  of  thought  which  is  particularly  commonplace. 
The  contrast  of  the  two  trains  of  thought  in  this  case  is  almost  as 
violent  as  possible,  and  it  is  likely  either  to  distract  the  attention  from 
the  dignity  of  the  view,  or  by  its  very  incongruity  to  introduce  a  comic 
element  equally  destructive  to  the  sublimity  of  the  landscape  effect. 
On  the  other  hand,  a  man  who  perceives  the  essential  unity  of  all  nature, 
who  recognizes  in  the  trickle  from  a  melting  snow-patch  the  manifes- 
tation of  the  same  forces  that  have  shaped  the  mountains,  —  such  a  man 
constantly  finds  himself  contemplating  the  vast  natural  forces  and 
discovering  expressions  of  their  sublimity  in  commonplace  and  relatively 
insignificant  objects. 

The  works  of  man  may  produce  an  effect  of  grandeur  in  their  own 
smaller  way  by  their  size  and  mass  alone,  but  man  can  also  enhance  the 

*  "The  first  sight  of  a  group  of  such  forms  [giant  palms],  in  their  natural  environ- 
ment of  tropical  forest,  is  a  magnificent  surprise,  —  a  surprise  that  strikes  you  dumb. 
Nothing  seen  in  temperate  zones,  —  not  even  the  huger  growths  of  the  Californian 
slope,  —  could  have  prepared  your  imagination  for  the  weird  solemnity  of  that  mighty 
colonnade.  Each  stone-grey  trunk  is  a  perfect  pillar,  —  but  a  pillar  of  which  the 
stupendous  grace  has  no  counterpart  in  the  works  of  man.  You  must  strain  your  head 
well  back  to  follow  the  soaring  of  the  prodigious  column,  up,  up,  up  through  abysses 
of  green  twilight,  till  at  last  —  far  beyond  a  break  in  that  infinite  interweaving  of  limbs 
and  lianas  which  is  the  roof  of  the  forest  —  you  catch  one  dizzy  glimpse  of  the  capital : 
a  parasol  of  emerald  feathers  outspread  in  a  sky  so  blinding  as  to  suggest  the  notion 
of  azure  electricity. 

"  One  of  the  first  elements  of  the  emotion  [that  such  a  vision  excites]  to  become 
clearly  distinguishable  is  the  aesthetic;  and  this,  in  its  general  mass,  might  be  termed 
the  sense  of  terrible  beauty.  Certainly  the  spectacle  of  that  unfamiliar  life,  —  silent, 
tremendous,  springing  to  the  sun  in  colossal  aspiration,  striving  for  light  against  Titans, 
and  heedless  of  man  in  the  gloom  beneath  as  of  groping  beetle,  —  thrills  like  the  rhythm 
of  some  single  marvellous  verse  that  is  learned  in  a  glance  and  remembered  forever." 

Lafcadio  Hearn,  Shadowings,  1907,  p.  217-219  in  essay,  Gothic  Horror. 


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LANDSCAPE    EFFECTS  8i 

eifect  of  his  designs,  to  a  degree  seldom  found  in  nature,  by  consistency 
of  scale  and  perfection  of  organization  all  tending  to  the  same  emotional 
result.  And  here  again  the  effect  of  sublimity  or  grandeur  is  increased 
if  the  buildings  evidently  express  some  great  idea  or  emotion,  religious 
or  other,  which  makes  them  thereby  the  more  a  part  of  the  great  forces 
of  the  universe. 

If  the  perception  of  the  littleness  of  man  in  comparison  with  the  Desolation 
might  of  natural  forces  gives  us  in  a  particular  case  a  feeling  of  help- 
lessness we  may  call  the  effect  awe,  or  in  an  extreme  case  even  terror, 
or  if  we  are  describing  the  landscape  we  may  call  it  stern,  or  menacing, 
or  perhaps  terrible,  according  to  the  degree  of  the  emotion  which  it 
arouses.  These  effects  are  likely  to  be  partly  the  direct  result  of  dark- 
ness, perhaps  also  of  cold,  and  of  violent  wind,  but  they  are  also  and 
in  larger  part  the  result  less  directly  of  the  difficulty  and  danger  or  toil 
which  the  observer  perceives  that  the  place  would  offer  to  any  one  who 
endeavored  to  travel  through  it  or  remain  for  long  in  it.  Where  the 
effect  of  unpleasantness  and  difficulty  comes  from  the  exposure  and 
barrenness  of  the  country,  we  are  likely  to  call  it  desolation.*  (See 
Plate  II.) 

The  melancholy  landscape  has  very  closely  the  type  of  effect  which  Melancholy 
we  have  discussed  earlier  in  this  chapter  and  have  called,  for  lack  of 

*  "We  need  not  go  so  far  as  the  Arctic  regions  to  feel  effects  of  dreariness  in  all 
their  power.  Our  own  island  has  regions  of  miserable  desolation,  of  which  perhaps  the 
worst  that  I  have  seen  is  the  great  moor  of  Rannoch.  There  is  an  excellent  descrip- 
tion of  it  in  Macculloch,  hardly  to  be  surpassed  for  the  skill  with  which  it  conveys  the 
depressing  aspect  of  such  scenery  :  — 

"'Pray  imagine  the  moor  of  Rannoch;  for  who  can  describe  it?  A  great  level 
(I  hope  the  word  will  pardon  this  abuse  of  it)  a  thousand  feet  above  the  sea,  sixteen  or 
twenty  miles  long  and  nearly  as  much  wide,  bounded  by  mountains  so  distant  as 
scarcely  to  form  an  apprehensible  boundary  ;  open,  silent,  solitary ;  an  ocean  of  black- 
ness and  bogs,  a  world  before  chaos ;  not  so  good  as  chaos,  since  its  elements  are  only 
rocks  and  bogs,  with  a  few  pools  of  water,  bogs  of  the  Styx  and  waters  of  Cocytus,  with 
one  great,  long,  sinuous,  flat,  dreary,  black  Acheron-like  lake,  Loch  Lydoch,  near 
which  arose  three  fire-trees  just  enough  to  remind  me  of  the  vacuity  of  all  the  rest. 
Not  a  sheep  nor  a  cow;  even  the  crow  shunned  it  and  wheeled  his  croaking  flight  far 
off  to  better  regions.  If  there  was  a  blade  of  grass  anywhere  it  was  concealed  by  the 
dark  stems  of  the  black,  muddy  sedges  and  by  the  yellow,  melancholy  rush  of  the 
bogs.'"     P.  G.  Hamerton,  Landscape,  1885,  p.  1 17.     (See  References.) 


82 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

better  words,  peaceful,  restful,  suave.  It  is  free  from  sudden  motion 
or  change,  it  is  sequential  in  line,  and  of  soft  color.  Its  gently  depress- 
ing quality  is  due  either  to  some  gloominess  in  local  color,  or  in  at- 
mospheric conditions,  such  as  approaching  darkness  or  a  drizzling 
rain,  or  to  some  melancholy  thoughts  aroused  through  association 
(see  Plate  2),  —  aroused,  for  instance,  by  a  ruined  building,  a  church- 
yard, an  old  and  decaying  tree,  or  by  anything  which  suggests  the  end 
or  destruction  of  something  once  beautiful  or  prospering. 

Gayety  The  gayety  of  a  scene  seems  to  depend  objectively  on  a  multitude  of 

small  motions,  and  on  bright  light  with  enough  small  and  broken  con- 
trasting shadow  to  make  the  landscape  scintillating  and  sparkling. 
The  play  of  a  water  surface,  the  movement  of  branches  and  their  shad- 
ows in  the  sun  and  breeze,  the  twittering  of  birds,  would  to  most  of 
us  make  a  landscape  seem  gay.  Gayety  being  a  somewhat  superficial 
and  transitory  emotion,  it  would  usually  be  overshadowed  in  the 
human  mind  by  feelings  of  awe  or  grandeur  or  sublimity  if  a  landscape 
aroused  these  feelings  as  well,  and  therefore  if  a  landscape  is  called  gay, 
it  is  likely  to  be  a  small  and  not  very  impressive  scene. 

Mystery  The  effect  of  mystery  is  the  result  of  impossibility  of  complete  per- 

ception. It  may  be  caused  by  simple  inability  to  see  the  landscape 
with  any  distinctness,  as  for  instance  when  the  scene  is  shrouded  in 
haze  or  in  a  snow  storm  or  in  darkness,  or  it  may  be  that  the  foreground 
is  clearly  seen,  but  that  an  important  part  of  the  landscape  known  to 
be  present  is  nevertheless  concealed,  as  where  a  river  or  a  road  winds 
out  of  sight  behind  some  intervening  barrier.  Or  it  may  be  that  sheer 
multiplicity  of  detail  prevents  our  clear  comprehension  of  the  landscape, 
as  when  we  look  at  the  misty  leaves  and  branches  of  a  thick  deciduous 
wood  in  early  spring.  The  result  of  this  mystery  upon  the  mind  of 
the  observer  may  be  little  more  than  mere  confusion,  but  more  often 
it  is  a  pleasant  challenge  to  the  imagination  which  sets  the  observer  to 
trying  to  determine  for  himself  by  closer  investigation  what  is  concealed 
from  his  first  glance,  or  if  this  be  impossible,  to  filling  in  and  complet- 
ing the  unseen  landscape  according  to  the  play  of  his  own  fancy.*  (See 
.    Plate  20.) 

*  "In  parts  it  has  been  allowed  to  grow  up  to  a  rather  monotonous  and  weedy- 
looking  dense  undergrowth  which  presents  an  uninviting  barrier  nearly  uniform  in 


LANDSCAPE    EFFECTS 83 

It  is  to  be  noticed  that  landscape  effects  often  depend  objectively  Effects  from 
on  transitory  conditions  like  light  and  shade,  hour  of  day,  weather,  and   ^my^P^y 
season.     (See  again  Plate  20,  and  also  Plate  11.)     A  landscape  of  rocky 
upland  country  about  a  mountain  tarn  might  be  mysterious  in  a  day 
of  low-drifting  clouds,  stern  or  desolate  in  a  storm,  and  perhaps  on  a 
bright  breez}^  spring  morning  even  gay. 

In  the  larger  landscape  designs  which  are  necessarily  divided  into  Harmony  and 
a  number  of  separate  scenes,*  and  where  the  observer  comes  to  one  Contrast  in 
scene  with  the  memory  of  the  previous  scene  still  fresh  in  his  mind,  it 
is  to  be  noticed  that  this  memory  is  practically  the  landscape  effect  of 
the  previously  beheld  scene,  and  that  therefore  in  the  total  effect  of  the 
whole  design  the  sequence  and  the  nature  of  the  subordinate  effects 
must  be  a  matter  of  careful  study. f  A  broad  outlook  from  a  hillside 
is  well  led  up  to  by  a  walk  through  a  deep  and  gloomy  wood.     The 

quality  wherever  the  eye  seeks  to  penetrate  the  depths  of  the  wood ;  while  in  other 
parts  the  undergrowth  has  been  so  completely  removed  that  the  eye  ranges  freely  in 
every  direction  amongst  a  rather  monotonous  succession  of  bare  trunks  and  through 
them  to  the  open  spaces  or  to  the  buildings  that  lie  beyond.  In  either  case  there  is 
a  loss  of  that  enticing  mystery  and  that  feeling  of  indefinite  extension  inviting  one 
to  wander  from  glade  to  opening  glade  which  forms  one  of  the  most  charming  and 
refreshing  qualities  of  sylvan  scenery.  .  .  .  Glades  of  turf  with  moss  and  other  low 
ground  cover  plants,  free  from  bush  and  brambles  that  impede  the  foot  and  from 
foliage  at  a  height  that  obstructs  the  vision,  ought  to  lead  into  the  woods  like  narrow 
extensions  of  the  adjoining  meadows,  disappearing  out  of  sight  around  a  bend  of  denser 
undergrowth  on  either  side  in  a  manner  to  invite  exploration,  branching  irregularly 
into  other  glades,  widening  here  and  there  as  the  disposition  of  the  larger  trees  may  sug- 
gest, forming  at  some  points  dark  shady  tunnels  that  widen  out  beyond  into  sunny  but 
secluded  openings  in  the  heart  of  the  woods.  There  is  need  of  skilfully  developing  intri- 
cacy, mystery  and  harmonious  variety  in  the  composition  of  glades  and  thickets,  and 
of  light  within  the  shade ;  and  at  the  same  time  and  by  the  same  means  of  developing 
such  conditions  as  will  lead  great  numbers  of  people  to  wander  in  comfort  and  safety 
through  the  pleasant  labyrinth." 

From  F.  L.  Olmsted,  Jr.'s  unpublished  report  to  the  City  Plan  Commission, 
Detroit,  Mich.,  March  19,  1915. 

*  See  Chapter  V,  p.  71. 

t  "Gardening  indeed  possesses  one  advantage,  never  to  be  equalled  in  the  other 
art  [architecture] :  in  various  scenes,  it  can  raise  successively  all  the  different  emotions." 

Henry  Home,  Lord  Kames,  Elements  of  Criticism,  from  Chapter  XXV,  Gardening 
and  Architecture. 


84 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

lively  cascade  is  set  off  by  the  still  pool  below  it.  The  effects  of  the  quiet 
open  landscape  in  one  part  of  a  great  park  and  the  meeting-place  for 
crowds  in  another  part  are  each  heightened  by  the  presence  of  the 
other.  The  shady  pergola  at  the  end  of  a  garden,  the  sunlit  open  flower 
beds  around  the  central  fountain,  are  each  the  more  attractive  for  the 
contrast  the  other  affords. 
Effects  in  Any  natural  feature  sufficiently  unified  to  have  a  character  will 

TA      T^*^  have   thereby  its  own  effect.     In   some  cases,  this    effect,  this    spirit 

of  the  scene,  will  seem  a  definite  individuality.  This  is  particularly 
true  of  waterfalls,  which  have  so  much  in  form,  in  motion,  in  set- 
ting, to  make  them  individual.  This  is  well  exemplified  by  the  three 
falls  shown  in  Plates  12,  13,  and  14,  which,  although  they  all  lie 
not  far  apart  on  the  same  river,  are  still  strikingly  different  in  their 
expressions. 

In  a  varied  natural  landscape,  particularly  that  of  a  mountainous 
country,  the  sequence  of  natural  characters  produces  its  corresponding 
sequence  of  effects,  each  enhanced  in  the  mind  of  the  beholder  by  the 
memory  of  the  others.  Take  for  instance  what  a  man  may  see  who 
climbs  a  peak  in  the  Alps.  He  starts  in  the  early  morning  from  his  room 
in  the  little  Swiss  village  in  the  sheltered  valley,  and  walks  in  the  half- 
light  through  the  narrow  crooked  street  between  the  overhanging 
houses  where  people  are  just  astir.  Presently  he  comes  out  on  the 
open  grassland,  steep,  sidelong,  clinging  to  the  hill,  but  every  foot  of 
it  either  used  for  pasturage  or  cut  for  hay  for  winter  fodder.  Then 
he  enters  the  deep  spruce  woods,  still  cold  with  the  night  air  before  the 
coming  of  the  sun,  and  goes  upward  along  the  valley  of  a  mountain 
brook,  following  first  a  road  down  which  the  wood  for  the  village  is 
hauled,  and  then  a  path  which  scales  the  head  wall  of  the  brook  valley. 
As  he  comes  over  its  crest,  he  finds  himself  above  the  wood  and  for  the 
first  time  in  the  morning  sun,  and  he  sees  across  the  lower  open  ridges 
of  rock  and  snow  the  peak  which  he  means  to  reach.  For  two  or  three 
hours  he  goes  upward,  over  slopes  of  rock  and  sparse  grass  and  then 
through  snow  which,  first  lying  in  wisps  on  the  north  sides  of  bowlders, 
soon  covers  all  the  ground  and  stretches  in  furrowed  fields  toward  the 
foot  of  the  peak.  Looking  down,  he  sees  the  village  from  which  he  has 
come,  a  group  of  toy  houses  on  a  patch  of  green  velvet  grassland,  still 


tee     /\-;v'^/^ 


•''iiipi 


^5!"^^^^i'«''^iil»'^'H'''S.  -        i||i 


rf-, 


LANDSCAPE    EFFECTS  85 

in  the  shadow  of  the  valley.  He  is  no  longer  as  fresh  as  when  he 
started,  he  pays  less  attention  to  the  little  interesting  things  or  the 
greater  beauties  along  the  way,  but  he  comes  to  the  rock  wall  of  the 
peak  with  the  concentration  of  energy  with  which  a  wrestler  meets  a 
worthy  foe.  Perhaps  for  hours,  putting  all  his  strength  into  each  cal- 
culated cautious  motion,  he  climbs  from  one  chosen  hand-hold  and 
foot-hold  to  another  until  he  reaches  the  summit,  and  is  rewarded  by  a 
stupendous  sweep  of  view  over  rocky  peak  and  snowfield,  below  which 
the  hills  that  hemmed  in  the  valley  of  his  last  night's  stay  are  mere 
undulations  in  the  vast  expanse  dominated  by  the  peak  on  which  he 
stands. 

In  landscape  compositions  created  by  man,  sequence  and  mutual  Effects  in 
enhancement  of  effects  may  also  be  found,  as  the  calculated  results  of  ^^V^^^ 
design.  When  the  chateau  of  Versailles  was  built,  with  its  surrounding 
broad  terraces,  its  elaborate  pools  and  statuary,  its  great  fountains, 
its  mile-long  reach  of  artificial  water,  it  was  intentionally  the  expres- 
sion of  the  pride  and  power  of  the  King  of  France.*  Nothing  else  but 
enormous  size  could  have  conveyed  this  effect.  Nothing  but  this 
strict  and  pompous  formality,  this  centering  of  a  gigantic  scheme  on  a 
great  palace,  exactly  in  the  heart  of  which  was  the  private  room  of  the 
King,  could  have  so  well  expressed  what  the  design  was  intended  to 
express,  the  concentration  of  the  wealth  and  power  of  seventeenth  cen- 
tury France  in  Le  Roi  Soleil.  (See  Drawing  IX,  opp.  p.  78.)  The 
Grand  Trianon,  originally  a  retreat,  was  rebuilt  as  a  residence  for 
Louis  XIV,  who  even  in  his  private  life  could  not  put  aside  his  kingly 
state.  The  scale  of  the  buildings  is  smaller,  their  main  arrangement 
somewhat  less  rigidly  axial,  but  they  expressed  merely  another  phase 
of  the  royal  magnificence  which  created  the  Chateau.  (See  Drawing 
X,  opp.  p.  80.)  The  Petit  Trianon  was  built  a  century  later,  inten- 
tionally as  a  place  for  escape  from  the  overpowering  conventions  and 
restrictions  of  the  court.  In  its  design,  as  in  its  decoration,  it  is 
dainty,  delicate,  intimate,  almost  a  play-house  rather  tha:'  a  dwelling, 
but  still  a  queen's  play-house,  built  without  consideration  of  cost  but 
only  of  the  effect  desired.  (See  Drawing  XI,  opp.  p.  82.)  The 
Hameau  —  in  the  midst  of  the  "English  Garden"  which  was  itself  a 

*  Cf.  Chapter  IV,  p.  42. 


86 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

reaction  against  the  formalized  grounds  of  the  Chateau  and  the  Grand 
Trianon  —  expressed  still  more  definitely  an  attempt  to  seek  relief 
from  the  etiquette  and  repression  of  court  life.  Here,  in  peasant 
dress,  Marie  Antoinette  forgot,  or  played  she  forgot,  that  she  was 
queen  of  France.  The  theatrical  farm  buildings  suggested  as  far  as 
might  be  a  totally  different  life ;  their  irregular  forms,  ivy-covered 
walls  and  thatched  roofs,  their  informal  setting  of  tree  and  pond, 
were  intentionally  created  to  produce  through  their  rustic  style,  their 
naturalistic  character,  an  effect  as  different  as  possible  from  the 
formal  setting  of  the  rest  of  the  life  of  the  court.  (See  Drawing  XII, 
opp.  p.  84.) 
Design  in  In  planning  his  work,  particularly  in  its  larger  outlines,  the  land- 

Effects  scape  architect  has  need  to  remind  himself  that  it  is  these  effects,  and 

not  physical  characteristics  as  such,  which  are  ultimate  units  in  his 
design.  An  appreciation  of  this  fact  will  sometimes  enable  him  to 
escape  from  a  difficulty  which  otherwise  might  seem  insurmountable. 
It  usually  happens  that  a  client  expresses  his  desires  in  concrete  terms, 
often  in  very  uncompromising  terms  indeed ;  he  tells  the  landscape 
architect  that  he  wishes  certain  definite  objects  in  certain  definite  ar- 
rangements. The  landscape  architect  may  know  that  such  arrange- 
ments of  objects  would  be  inevitably  ugly.  He  should  have  the 
power  to  look  back  of  the  definite  objects  proposed  by  the  client  and 
to  appreciate  the  large  fundamental  effect  for  which  they  stand  in  the 
client's  mind.  This  effect  may  well  be  worthy,  and  the  designer  may 
hope  to  work  out  some  other  arrangement  of  objects  which  will  pro- 
duce the  same  desired  effect,  and  so  satisfy  the  client,  —  an  arrangement 
which  shall  be  desirable  also  in  other  respects,  and  not  open  to  the 
objections  which  the  designer  finds  in  the  client's  original  suggestion. 
A  client  may,  for  instance,  say  that  he  desires  to  build,  on  the  exposed 
summit  of  a  rocky  and  pine-clad  New  England  hill,  a  replica  of  a  cer- 
tain long,  low,  flat-roofed,  stucco  Italian  villa.  The  designer  may  know 
that  such  a  structure  would  be  ugly  in  the  given  setting,  and  he  may 
find  that  what  really  appeals  to  the  client  in  that  particular  villa  is 
not  its  form,  but  perhaps  a  certain  effect  of  refined  magnificence  of 
living.  The  designer  may  then  be  able  to  persuade  the  client  that  this 
effect  which  he  desires  may  be  more  cheaply,  more  beautifully,  more 


LANDSCAPE    EFFECTS 


87 


appropriately  expressed  by  a  structure  built  of  the  local  stone,  suggest- 
ing perhaps  an  English  country  house  of  refinement  and  importance, 
conveniently  related  in  an  informal  way  to  the  topography,  and  har- 
moniously crowning  with  its  irregular  mass  the  rugged  summit  of  the 
hill. 


CHAPTER  VII 
LANDSCAPE   COMPOSITION 


Composition 
in  Landscape 
and  in 
Painting 


Composition  in  landscape  and  in  painting  —  Order  in  composition,  objective 

AND  subjective  —  SEGREGATION   OF  THE  COMPOSITION UnITY  AND  ATTENTION 

- — Attention  and  training — Emphasis,  contrast,  climax,  dominance  —  Landscape 
composition  within  the  visual  angle  —  Unity  of  larger  landscape  compositions  — 
The  FORMS  of  order  in  composition  —  Repetition  —  Harmony,  monotony, 
and  variety  —  Sequence —  Sequence  of  continuation  or  repetition  —  Rhythm  — 
Progression  —  Balance  —  Symmetrical  —  Occult  —  Intensification  of  emotion 
from  repetition,  sequence,  and  balance  —  Characteristics  of  objects  in 
landscape  composition  —  Shape  —  Individuality  through  shape  in  landscape 
composition  —  Value  of  shapes  and  their  arrangement  in  composition  —  Size, 
SCALE,  AND  DISTANCE  —  Absolute  and  relative  scale  —  Indication  of  scale  in 
landscape  composition  —  Effects  of  perspective  —  Texture  —  Scale  relation  of 
texture  to  size  and  shape  —  Color  —  Color  and  light  —  Hue,  intensity,  and  value 
in  color  composition  —  Emotional  effect  of  colors  —  Color  harmony  —  Color  in 
landscape  composition  —  Light  and  shade  —  Light  and  shade  unity  in  land- 
scape composition — -Variability  of  light  and  shade  —  Atmosphere  and  atmos- 
pheric perspective  —  As  a  consideration  in  landscape  composition  —  Illu- 
sions IN  composition  —  Of  material  —  Of  shape  —  Of  size  —  Of  character  — 
Associational  illusions  —  Landscape  compositions  —  Typical  kinds  of  pictorial 
compositions  —  The  vista  as  a  typical  example  —  Pictorial  enframement,  fore- 
grounds, backgrounds,  and  planes  of  distance  —  Objects  in  landscape  composi- 
tion according  to  their  design  value  —  Temporary  elements. 

Landscape  composition  is  to  the  landscape  architect,  as  it  is  to 
the  landscape  painter,  the  arrangement  of  the  elements  of  his  design 
into  an  ordered  w^hole.  The  painter,  how^ever,  is  making  a  composition 
in  pigments  on  a  flat  canvas  which  represents  his  subject  as  seen  from 
one  point  of  view^  only ;  and  he  is  therefore  chiefly  concerned  with  the 
two-dimensional  relations  of  his  elements,  in  the  plane  of  his  canvas, 
as  seen  from  that  point  of  view.  The  three-dimensional  relations  of 
things  which  he  represents  he  can  only  suggest  by  the  way  he  handles 

88 


LANDSCAPE    COMPOSITION 89 

the  color,  the  drawing  in  perspective,  the  atmosphere,  in  his  picture. 
The  landscape  architect  is  making  a  composition  in  solid  objects  in  the 
outdoor  world  which  will  be  seen  from  many  points  of  view,  and  so  the 
three-dimensional  relations  of  his  elements  will  be  to  him  the  more 
important  consideration.  It  is  true,  however,  that  any  one  view  of 
the  landscape  architect's  work  will  produce  on  the  spectator's  mind 
an  effect  closely  comparable  to  that  produced  by  a  painting,  and  there- 
fore the  landscape  architect  must  not  neglect  this  two-dimensional  or 
pictorial  relation  in  his  work.  It  is  indeed  only  through  obtaining  a 
series  of  these  two-dimensional  views  that  an  observer  can  perceive  or 
value  the  three-dimensional  composition.* 

Our  pleasure  in  the  composition  of  a  landscape  depends  on  our  ap-  Order  in 
preciation  of  the  ordered  relations  which  exist  among  its  parts.     This  ^y2°^^^^°^ 
order  must  inevitably  consist  objectively  of  some  similarity  of  physical  Subjective 
characteristics   among  the  parts,  or  of  some  discernibly  harmonious 
space  relation  among  them ;    that  is,  the  separate  objects  in  the  com- 
position must  be  either  harmonious  in  color  or  shape  or  texture  or  else 
harmoniously   related   one    to   another  by    repetition   or   sequence   or 
balance.     Stated  subjectively,  the  pleasure  is  based  on  the  pleasant 
relations  of  the  interests  which  are  aroused  by  the  various  characteris- 
tics.    The  repetition,  sequence,  or  balance  which  produces  order  in  a 
composition  is  in  this  sense  therefore  repetition,  sequence,  or  balance 
of  interest,  and  not  merely  of  objects  or  of  characteristics.     This  can 
easily  be  proved  by  observing  a  picture  which  contains  upon  one  side 

*  "  The  great  object  of  our  present  inquiry  seems  to  be,  what  is  that  mode  of  study 
which  will  best  enable  a  man  of  a  liberal  and  intelligent  mind,  to  judge  of  the  forms, 
colours,  effects,  and  combinations  of  visible  objects  :  to  judge  of  them  either  as  single 
compositions,  which  may  be  considered  by  themselves  without  reference  to  what 
surrounds  them ;  or  else  as  parts  of  scenery,  the  arrangement  of  which  must  be  more 
or  less  regulated  and  restrained  by  what  joins  them,  and  the  connection  of  which 
with  the  general  scenery  must  be  constantly  attended  to.  Such  knowledge  and 
judgment  comprehend  the  whole  science  of  improvement  with  regard  to  its  effect 
on  the  eye;  and  I  believe  can  never  be  perfectly  acquired,  unless  to  the  study  of 
natural  scenery,  and  of  the  various  styles  of  gardening  at  different  periods,  the  im- 
prover adds  the  theory  at  least  of  that  art,  the  very  essence  of  which  is  connection : 
a  principle  of  all  others  the  most  adapted  to  correct  the  chief  defects  of  improvers." 

Sir  Uvedale  Price,  Essays  on  the  Picturesque,  iSio,  v.  i,  p.  I2.     (See  References.) 


90 


LANDSCAPE     DESIGN 


Segregation 
of  the 
Composition 


Unity  and 
Attention 


of  the  center  a  large  tree-mass  and  on  the  other  a  small  figure  of  a  man ; 
the  small  human  figure  may  be  perfectly  balanced  in  interest  against 
the  much  larger  tree  because  of  the  greater  number  of  associations 
which  are  aroused  in  the  human  mind  by  a  human  figure  than  by  a 
tree.  Such  a  single  balance  of  interest  in  the  picture  may  not  make 
the  picture  balanced  as  a  whole,  however.  The  total  interest  of  the 
area  on  one  side  of  the  center  —  in  color,  in  shape,  in  contrast,  in  all 
that  attracts  and  holds  attention  —  must  balance  the  total  interest 
of  the  other  side. 

In  composing  a  landscape,  the  designer's  first  act  is  the  direction 
of  the  attention  to  it  as  a  unity,  thereby  segregating  it  in  the  observer's 
mind  from  the  outside  world.  In  this  respect  the  landscape  architect 
is  less  fortunate  than  the  painter  and  the  sculptor.  The  painter  gets 
segregation  for  his  picture  by  Its  frame ;  the  sculptor  has  his  statue 
Isolated  on  its  own  pedestal.  The  landscape  architect,  however,  is 
dealing  with  an  area  of  land  which  is  actually  continuous  with  the  rest 
of  the  earth's  surface,  yet  he  too  must  set  the  limits  of  his  composition 
as  the  first  necessary  act  of  producing  It,  and  then  he  must  correlate 
the  subordinate  parts  of  this  unity.  This  segregation  may  at  times  be 
obtained  like  the  sculptor's  by  somewhat  Isolating  the  object,  as  for 
Instance,  In  the  case  of  a  free-standing  summer  house,  a  grove,  a  hill, 
an  Island;  but  almost  always  it  is  obtained  either  by  actual  inclosure 
or  by  pictorial  enframement.  For  instance,  actual  Inclosure  may  be 
given  by  a  fence,  a  border  plantation,  or  woods  about  an  open  glade ; 
while  the  arrangement  of  a  view  through  a  cut  vista-opening  or  between 
foreground  trees  may  give  pictorial  enframement.  The  first  Is  effective 
from  any  point  of  view,  the  second  only  from  a  chosen  point.  In  both 
cases  we  can  see  that  the  fundamental  effect  produced  Is  concentration 
of  the  observer's  attention  upon  the  unity  designed.  Where  mere 
physical  segregation  or  enframement  may  be  Impossible  or  undesir- 
able, sufficient  unity  may  sometimes  be  obtained  merely  by  concen- 
tration of  attention  by  striking  characteristics  or  by  unity  of  parts,  for 
instance  by  a  brilliant  mass  of  flowers  In  a  shrub  border,  or  by  a  unified 
pattern  In  a  parterre  bed. 

The  fact  that  the  effective  unity  perceived  in  any  scene  is  merely 
the  unity  on  which  attention  is  at  the  moment  concentrated  is  shown 


LANDSCAPE    COMPOSITION^ 91 

by  the  experience  that  one  may  perceive  several  distinct  and  different 
unities  at  different  times  in  exactly  the  same  view.  For  example,  a 
man  may  come  into  a  room  at  the  end  of  which  is  a  mullioned  window. 
He  first  sees  merely  a  pattern  of  panels  of  light  in  a  lattice  of  dark. 
Soon  he  notices,  through  the  window,  certain  converging  lines  of  paths, 
balanced  masses  of  flower  color,  and  dark  overarching  trees,  and  he 
enjoys  the  picture  so  produced  within  the  frame  of  the  window.  His 
attention  then  goes  still  farther,  and  from  this  picture  and  its  elements 
he  infers  a  formal  garden,  which  his  imagination  constructs  in  all  its 
dimensions.  Plate  15  is  another  illustration  of  the  possibility  of  alter- 
native unities  from  the  same  view.  In  this  picture,  according  as  the 
attention  falls,  one  sees  either  a  pattern  of  tree  trunks  and  branches 
with  a  background  of  landscape,  or  a  view  of  a  winding  road  seen 
through  a  foreground  of  trees. 

The  associative  processes  of  the  mind  will  make  it  group  certain  Attention  and 
things  together  and  automatically  exclude  certain  incongruous  things,  ''^^^^^S 
so  that  these  incongruous  things  are  often  not  remembered  and  some- 
times not  even  noticed.  The  things  most  likely  to  be  observed  in  this 
way  are  therefore  those  w^hich  are  most  akin  to  the  memories  of  the 
particular  observer.*  For  instance,  the  horticulturist  sees  a  plant,  the 
geologist  an  outcrop,  the  painter  a  composition.  Training  in  a  cer- 
tain kind  of  perception  will  make  that  perception  more  automatic  and 
therefore  unconscious,  and  will  make  the  objects  so  perceived  more 
interesting,  hence  the  attention  of  each  man  is  apt  to  rest  first  and 
longest  on  objects  which  he  is  "trained  to  see,"  necessarily  to  the 
partial  exclusion  of  other  objects,  which  might  be  got  by  synthesis  of 
the  same  visual  material  along  other  lines.  On  the  other  hand,  an 
unfamiliar  object  among  familiar  ones  may  strike  the  attention  by 
force  of  contrast,  and  hold  it  by  force  of  novelty. 

The  relative  force  with  which  the  different  objects  in  a  composition  Emphasis, 
will  strike  the  attention,  the  relative  interest,  and  duration  of  interest.  Contrast, 
which  the  observer  will  feel  in  them,  is  something  of  the  first  importance  Dominance 
in  any  design.     Any  emphasizing  of  an  object  is  merely  arranging  that 
the  attention  shall  be  attracted  to  it.     All  the  effects  of  contrast,  of 
novelty,  of  surprise,  are  due  to  the  fact  that  the  mind  grasps  with 

*  Cf.  Chapter  II,  p.  12. 


92 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Landscape 

Composition 
within  the 
Visual  Angle 


Unity  of 
Larger 
Landscape 
Compositions 


particular  concentration  of  attention  anything  different  from  that 
which  it  has  just  considered,  and  the  closer  the  juxtaposition  of  the 
two  dissimilar  perceptions,  in  time  or  in  space,  the  more  powerful  the 
appeal  to  the  attention.  Effects  of  climax  depend  on  a  sequential 
demand  on  the  attention,  culminating  by  directing  the  attention  to 
the  object  of  most  interest.  An  object  may  to  some  extent  be  made 
dominant  in  a  composition  by  a  sequence  of  attention  leading  to  it, 
but  unless  it  is  itself  capable  of  holding  the  attention  for  a  sufficient 
time,  through  its  own  interest,  it  will  seem  to  be  occupying  a  place 
too  important  for  its  worth. 

There  is  a  physical  consideration  which  tends  to  limit  the  field 
within  which  the  attention  can  be  attracted  by  objects  in  a  pictorial 
composition,  namely,  the  fact  that  the  human  eye  is  so  constituted 
that  only  such  objects  can  be  clearly  seen  at  the  same  time  as  lie  within 
the  so-called  angle  of  vision,  which  is  normally  about  twenty  degrees. 
The  pictorial  compositional  relation  of  objects  can  be  well  perceived 
only  when  they  lie  so  close  together  that  the  attention  is  attracted  to 
each  of  them  according  to  its  value  in  the  composition  without  being 
distracted  by  the  necessity  of  turning  the  eye  or  turning  the  head  to 
bring  different  parts  of  the  composition  into  the  field  of  vision.  This 
consideration  is  as  true  of  a  landscape  composition  as  it  is  of  a  painting. 
A  man  may  stand  before  a  landscape  and  without  moving  his  body  see 
half  around  the  horizon,  but  it  is  only  if  the  landscape  unity  be  com- 
posed within  the  visual  angle  that  he  can  well  appreciate  it  as  a  pic- 
torial composition.* 

A  landscape  composition,  however,  may  give  pleasure  even  though 
it  covers  a  wider  angle  of  view  than  can  be  included  in  a  pictorial  unity. 
It  may  have  a  three-dimensional  unity,  an  organization  in  plan  and 
elevation,  which  can  be  reconstructed  In  the  mind  from  the  memories 
of  a  number  of  different  views,  which  views  indeed  may  not  be  all 
taken  from  the  same  station  point.  It  is  quite  possible  that  an 
observer  might  remember  a  garden  as  well  composed  and  beautiful 
even   although    it   were  impossible   to  take,  in   that  garden,  a   single 

*  Cf.  the  discussion  of  the  visual  angle,  p.  779-781,  in  N.  S.  Shaler's  article, 
already  referred  to,  The  Landscape  as  a  Means  of  Culture,  in  the  Atlantic  Monthly,  Dec. 
1898. 


LANDSCAPE    COMPOSITION 93 

photograph  that  would  be  pictorially  well  composed.     Repton  said  of 
Shardeloes  : 

"  This  park  must  be  acknowledged  one  of  the  most  beautiful  in  England, 
yet  I  doubt  whether  Claude  himself  could  find,  in  its  whole  extent,  a  single 
station  from  whence  a  picture  could  be  formed.  I  mention  this  as  a  proof  of 
the  little  affinity  between  pictures  and  scenes  in  nature."  * 

As  the  compositions  are  larger  and  less  likely  to  be  all  visible  from 
one  place,  so  does  remembered  effect  come  to  play  a  larger  and  larger 
part  in  producing  the  total  effect  of  the  composition.  So  do  con- 
sistency of  style,  of  character,  and  of  emotional  effect  become  more 
and  more  important  as  unifying  factors  in  the  design.  Pictorial  unity 
then  becomes  an  excellence  of  individual  parts. 

The  success  of  the  landscape  designer  in  producing  the  most  beautiful  The  Forms 
landscape  compositions  possible  under  the  chosen  or  enforced  Hmita-  ^  Order  in 
tions  of  the  problem  will  depend  on  his  skill  in  combining  the  shapes 
and  textures  and  colors  at  his  disposal  in  a  pleasant  and  orderly  fashion. 

The  units  may  be  such  and  so  arranged  that  motion  of  attention 
from  unit  to  unit  is  easiest  in  a  certain  direction.  This  effect  is  se- 
quence.^ 

The  units  may  be  such  and  so  arranged  that  this  tendency  to 
motion  of  the  attention  is  equal  in  two  opposite  directions  from  a 
vertical  axis.     This  is  balance. 

The  units  may  be  all  the  same  in  their  interest  and  consequent 
ability  to  attract  attention,  or  at  least  the  same  throughout  in  some 
characteristic.  This  is  repetition,  —  of  the  units  or  of  the  characteristic, 
as  the  case  may  be. 

These  forms  of  order  —  repetition,  sequence,  and  balance  —  may 
be  manifested  in  the  two-dimensional  pictorial  scene,  or  they  may  be 
perceived  in  the  three-dimensional  object,  the  two-dimensional  aspect 
of  which  need  not  manifest  them  directly.  For  Instance,  a  row  of 
columns  is  in  reality  a  repetition,  but  a  picture  of  a  row  of  columns  or 
a  view  of  them  in  perspective  is  a  sequence.     A  formal  garden   seen 

*  Repton,  Theory  and  Practice  of  Landscape  Gardening,  1805,  in  Chapter  V,  p.  65. 

t  Repetition,  sequence,  and  balance,  the  terms  used  to  denominate  three  forms  of 
order  by  Dr.  Denman  W.  Ross  in  his  book  On  Drawing  and  Painting,  Boston,  Hough- 
ton, Mifflin  Company,  1912. 


94 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Repetition 


Harmony, 
Monotony, 
and  Variety 


Sequence 


Sequence  of 

Continuation 
or  Repetition 


from  near  one  corner  may  be  perceived  as  symmetrical  although  the 
pictorial  view  of  it  is  not. 

Repetition  is  the  most  fundamental  of  the  forms  of  order,  and  the 
one  which  occurs  most  frequently.  To  have  harmony  there  must  be 
repetition ;  there  may  be  also  sequence  or  balance.  Repetition  in  a 
composition  may  be  the  repetition  of  a  number  of  objects  all  precisely 
alike  except  in  position ;  or  the  repetition  may  be  a  repetition  of  cer- 
tain characteristics  or  relations  only  of  the  objects,  of  their  shape  and 
size,  their  color,  their  attitude,  or  the  interval  which  separates  them. 
(See  the  tree  trunks  in  Plate  24  and  the  roofs  in  Plate  36.)  The  repeti- 
tion may  be  perceived  when  only  one  characteristic  is  repeated.  A  very 
varied  landscape  may  be  unified  by  being  predominantly  green.  The 
repetition  of  a  tone  through  a  rendered  drawing,  the  repetition  of 
boundary  lines  of  the  same  width  around  a  plan,  the  repetition  of  bay 
trees  of  the  same  size  and  shape  to  mark  the  corners  of  a  formal  pool, 
the  repetition  of  letters  at  the  same  slant  in  the  title  of  a  drawing, 
and  the  repetition  of  the  same  interval  between  these,  all  make  for 
harmony  and  thus  for  order  in  design. 

Complete  repetition  gives  complete  harmony.  Such  harmony  will 
often  be  monotony,  but  it  is  none  the  less  harmony.  Its  opposite, 
variety,  is  merely  relief  from  monotony.  Variety  is  not  a  principle  of 
organization,  but  the  pleasure  of  its  perception  is  a  principle  of  the  or- 
ganization of  the  human  mind. 

Sequence  depends  on  the  progressive  change  of  at  least  one  char- 
acteristic in  a  series  of  objects.  The  other  characteristics  may  or  may 
not  be  all  constant,  but  enough  of  them  must  remain  constant  to  make 
the  change  on  which  the  sequence  rests  perceptible.  A  succession  of 
objects  might  change  sequentially  in  shape,  or  size,  or  color;  but  if 
they  changed  in  all  these  characteristics  at  once,  they  might  become 
so  rapidly  different  as  not  to  appear  sequential  at  all. 

The  simplest  form  of  sequence  is  that  of  continuation  or  repetition. 
Such  sequences,  essentially  linear,  have  the  very  greatest  value  in  con- 
necting various  parts  of  a  design.     (See  the  roads  in  Plates  15  and  31.) 

"The  idea  of  Sequence  is  of  movement  and  the  satisfaction  and  pleasure  we 
get  from  any  Sequence  lies  in  its  movement,  not  in  divergences  and  other 
obstacles  to  progress.     Other  things  being  equal,  the  movements  which  are 


LANDSCAPE    COMPOSITION 95 

most  agreeable  are  those  which  are  consistent  in  character  and  easy  to  follow. 
It  must  not  be  argued  that  the  sequences  in  which  we  move  quickly  and  easily 
are  for  that  reason  the  most  interesting.  There  is  many  a  road  which  is  per- 
fectly straight  which  has  no  divergences  and  is  without  obstacles  or  difficulties 
which  is,  nevertheless,  a  very  stupid  road  to  travel  on.  It  may  offer  us  the 
possibilities  of  easy  and  rapid  motion  and  be  a  perfect  speedway  and  have  no 
other  interest.  Unless  we  are  in  for  the  pleasure  of  easy  and  rapid  movement 
the  road  I  have  described  has  no  attraction  for  us.  We  prefer  a  road  on  which 
we  are  entertained  as  we  go  along.  We  have  a  perfect  illustration  of  sequence 
in  a  straight  line,  but  we  get  through  it  quickly  and  are  not  at  all  interested. 
We  prefer,  perhaps,  to  move  slowly,  even  very  slowly,  if  there  is  something  to 
interest  us,  to  make  it  worth  while.  .  .  .  When  the  artist  has  established 
his  sequence,  which  is  a  certain  direction  and  form  of  movement,  he  can  put 
into  it  no  end  of  interesting  features  provided  that  he  keeps  the  sequence 
unbroken  and  does  not  admit  of  diverging  interests  or  obstacles  which  stop 
the  movement  and  make  it  impossible.  The  interests  and  attractions  which 
are  set  together  in  any  sequence  should  have  a  logical  connection  and  relation 
and  the  relation  should  be  one  of  sequence.  The  first  interest  should  lead 
us  to  the  second,  the  second  to  the  third,  and  so  on.  [See  the  snowshoe 
tracks  in  Plate  17.]  In  that  way  unity  is  secured  with  no  very  serious  loss 
either  of  interests  or  of  attractions."  * 

A  second  form  of  sequence  is  that  of  alternation  producing  the  Rhythm 
combination  of  harmony  with  rhythm. 

"When  any  line  or  sequence  is  broken  repeatedly  and  at  equal  intervals, 
we  get  alternations  which  give  us  the  feeling  of  Rhythm.  Rhythm  means  not 
a  continuation  merely  but  a  continuation  with  regularly  recurring  breaks  or 
accents.  In  sequences  of  Continuation  we  have  the  feeling  of  Harmony,  that 
is  all,  but  when  the  continuity  is  broken  at  regularly  recurring  intervals  by  a 
certain  change  we  get  in  addition  to  the  feeling  of  Harmony  the  feeling  of 
Rhythm.  [See  the  rhythmic  repetition  of  trees  in  Drawing  XI,  opp.  p.  82, 
and  in  Plate  16.] 

"It  is  possible  to  produce  the  effect  of  Rhythm  with  an  alternation  of  certain 
elements ;  other  elements  being,  so  to  speak,  imposed  upon  this  alternation 
as  concomitant  variations.  We  may,  for  example,  have  an  alternation  of 
large  areas  of  one  shape  with  small  areas  of  another  and  this  alternation  may 
be  set  in  a  line  or  sequence.  The  Rhythm  being  thus  established,  we  can  put 
a  different  composition  and  effect  of  light  in  every  area  of  the  sequence, 
whether  large  or  small.     The  variety  of  these  compositions  must,  of  course, 

*  Ross,  On  Drawing  and  Painting,  p.  68-69. 


96 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


be  properly  subordinated  to  the  unity  of  the  movement  in  which  they  occur. 
If  possible  the  interest  introduced  into  the  Rhythm  should  be  progressive."  * 


Progression  "Besides  the  Sequences  of  Continuation  and  of  Repetition  which  give  us 

the  sense  of  Harmony  and  the  Sequences  of  Repetitions  in  Alternations  which 
give  us  the  sense  of  Harmony  and  also  the  sense  of  Rhythm,  we  have  a  third 
type  of  sequence  in  which  we  have  the  feeling  of  an  orderly  progress  from  one 
thing  to  another,  either  upon  the  principle  of  an  arithmetical  or  of  a  geometri- 
cal progression.  The  sequences  of  this  third  type  I  shall  call  the  Sequences  of 
Progression. 

"In  Drawing  and  Painting  these  Sequences  of  Progression  take  the  form 
of  gradations  leading  from  one  tone  to  another,  from  one  position,  measure, 
shape  or  attitude  to  another,  always  by  degrees.  The  changes  are  not  only 
gradual  but  uniform  in  their  character.  They  represent  a  certain  difference 
or  a  certain  multiplication.  Because  of  the  repetition  or  continuation  of  a 
certain  change  these  sequences  of  gradation  or  progression  have  in  them  an 
element  of  Harmony  which  must  be  appreciated.  [See  Plate  30,  and  note  the 
progression  of  the  attention  along  the  grass  panel  towards  the  pergola.]  .  .  . 
It  is  in  Art  as  in  Nature :  the  order  of  changes  is  not  always  seen  in  the 
effect  or  result  but  it  is  there  all  the  same  or  should  be  there.  The  changes  in 
themselves  mean  variety.     The  order  of  the  changes  means  unity."  f 

Balance  When  we  look  at  a  picture  or  a  view  there  will  be  certain  objects  in 

it  which  more  than  others  appeal  to  our  attention,  either  because  they 
directly  attract  the  eye  in  a  sensory  way  by  their  brightness,  or  con- 
trast, or  definiteness,  or  because  they  attract  us  by  their  appeal  through 
association.  In  either  case  there  will  be  a  tendency  to  look  directly 
at  the  object  which  thus  claims  our  attention.  In  a  composition  of 
several  objects  the  mind  will  be  satisfied  only  when  these  different 
attractions  are  balanced  about  the  center  line  of  the  composition. 

Partly  at  least  because  of  the  greater  ease  with  which  the  eyes  and 
the  head  turn  sideways  rather  than  up  and  down,  we  are  more  keenly 
sensitive  in  compositions  to  equilibrium  of  attention  about  a  vertical 
axis  than  about  a  horizontal  or  other  axis.  There  is  an  associational 
reason  also  for  our  noticing  particularly  equilibriums  of  this  kind, 
namely,  that  we  are  familiar  in  the  world  about  us  with  a  multitude 
of  objects  whose  forms  are  balanced  about  a  vertical  axis  on  account  of 
symmetry  of  growth  and  the  action  of  gravitation.  On  these  accounts 
*  Ross,  On  Drawing  and  Painting,  p.  70.  t  Ibid.,  p.  71-72. 


LANDSCAPE     COMPOSITION    97 

the  term  "balance"  as  applied  to  landscape  composition  is  best  used 
to  mean  equilibrium  of  attraction  of  attention  about  a  vertical  axis 
only. 

This  balance  may  consist  in  exact  inverted  repetition  of  everything  Symmetrical 
on  one  side  of  the  vertical  axis  by  everything  on  the  other  side,  so  that  ^'^^'^^^ 
the  attention  attracted  by  any  object  or  part  of  an  object  on  one  side 
is  equalled  by  the  attention  attracted  by  an  exactly  similar  and  simi- 
larly-placed object  or  part  on  the  other  side ;  this  kind  of  balance  is 
called  symmetrical  balance.  (See  Plate  i.)  Symmetry,  like  sym- 
metrical balance,  is  inverted  similarity  of  parts  about  an  axis,  but  the 
term  "symmetry"  refers  to  physical  similarity  of  parts  in  relation  to 
an  axis  which  may  lie  vertically  or  in  any  other  direction.  A  flower 
pot  standing  on  its  base  is  an  example  of  symmetrical  balance  ;  the  same 
flower  pot  lying  on  its  side,  still  symmetrical  about  a  non-vertical  axis, 
and  still  physically  balanced,  is  no  longer  an  example  of  symmetrical 
balance  because  the  axes  of  symmetry  and  of  balance  no  longer  coincide. 

Balance  may  also  consist  in  a  disposition  of  objects  not  similar  nor  Occult 
similarly  placed  but  still  so  chosen  and  arranged  that  the  sum  of  the  ^^^'^^'^' 
attractions  on   one  side  of  the  vertical  axis  is  equaled  by  the  sum  of 
the  attractions  on  the  other  side.     This  kind  of  balance  is  called  unsym- 
metrical  or  occult  balance.     (See  Plates  4  and  23.) 

The  distinction  between  symmetrical  and  occult  balance  is  im- 
portant because  on  it  depends  most  of  the  compositional  difi"erence 
between  formal  and  so-called  informal  design,  between  the  composi- 
tional beauty  of  the  house,  the  terrace,  the  geometrical  garden,  and  the 
compositional  beauty  of  the  cliff,  the  brook  valley,  the  woodland  glade. 
Formal  balance  is  quickly  traceable  to  the  relation  of  elements  on  which 
it  depends.  In  occult  balance  we  feel  with  satisfaction  the  stability  of 
the  composition,  but  only  after  contemplating  or  consciously  analyzing 
it  do  we  perceive  the  balanced  relation  in  which  the  stability  consists. 
(See  the  occult  balance  due  to  direction  of  line  in  Plate  17.) 

We  find  from  experience  that  the  perception  of  repetition,  sequence,  Intensification 
and  balance  in  landscape  composition  causes  us  an  immediate  pleasure,  o/-^'""'*'"' 
an  amount  of  pleasure  which  seems  insufficiently  explained  by  the  Repetition, 
repetition,  sequence,  and  balance  of  muscular  motion  or  tendency  to  Sequence,  and 
muscular  motion  involved  in  their  perception.     But  we  should  remem- 


98 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Characteristics 
of  Objects  in 
Landscape 
Composition 


Shape 


ber  that  the  emotions  associated  with  repetition,  sequence,  and  balance 
are  associated  also  with  and  often  automatically  expressed  by  repeated, 
sequential,  or  balanced  muscular  motions  and  positions  of  the  whole 
body,  and  these  in  turn  intensify  the  emotion  that  suggested  them.* 
The  delicately  balanced  nervous  and  muscular  machinery  of  the  body 
is  thus  in  a  way  a  reverberator  for  the  increasing  of  the  effect  of  these 
experiences. 

In  his  actual  work  in  design,  the  landscape  architect  is  continually 
applying  the  principles  of  repetition,  sequence,  and  balance  in  the 
choice  and  arrangement  of  his  materials  according  to  their  characteris- 
tics, that  is,  according  to  their  shape,  color,  and  texture.  In  his  per- 
spective drawings  and  his  rendered  plans,  he,  like  the  painter,  is  dealing 
with  compositions  of  lines  and  areas  on  a  ffat  surface.  These  we  shall 
discuss  to  some  extent  in  the  appendix  to  this  book.  In  making  his 
compositions  in  the  objects  in  the  outdoor  world,  the  landscape  archi- 
tect is  in  a  way  handling  a  more  complicated  problem.  He  is  modify- 
ing the  position  and  characteristics  of  masses,  of  three-dimensional 
objects,  to  produce  relations  of  repetition,  sequence,  and  balance, 
pleasing  as  far  as  may  be  both  in  the  various  views  that  observers  get 
of  the  composition  as  they  move  about  in  it,  and  in  the  composite  idea 
of  the  constructed  whole  which  they  finally  carry  away.  Moreover, 
the  shape,  color,  and  texture  of  the  objects  which  the  designer  uses  in 
his  composition  are  modified  in  the  outdoor  world  by  effects  of  light 
and  shade,  of  distance,  of  atmosphere  and  aerial  perspective,  effects 
which  often  play  as  dominant  a  role  in  the  composition  as  do  the  more 
essential  characteristics  themselves. 

We  do  not  perceive  shape  so  directly  as  we  seem  to  perceive  color. 
We  learn  the  shape  of  a  thing  only  by  perceiving  the  relation  of  its 
parts.  When  we  perceive  a  shape  visually,  the  information  which  we 
get  directly  through  the  use  of  our  eyes  is  information  as  to  the  extent 
of  the  object  in  two  dimensions  only,  that  is,  information  given  us  by 
the  two-dimensional  image  which  falls  upon  the  retina.  The  actual 
three-dimensional  shape  of  the  object  we  are  aware  of  only  in  so  far 
as  we  can  deduce  it  from  this  two-dimensional  image  by  means  of  our 
visual   and   muscular  and  tactual   memories   of  previous   experiences. 

*  Cf.  Chapter  II,  p.  13-14. 


LANDSCAPE    COMPOSITION 99 

We  know  from  experience,  for  instance,  that  a  shadow  of  a  certain 
shape  on  an  object  indicates  that  the  object  has  a  certain  shape.  We 
know  that  a  certain  amount  of  convergence  of  the  eyes  in  looking  at  an 
object  indicates  that  it  is  a  certain  distance  away  from  us.  Our  memory 
of  the  time  and  labor  that  it  took  us  to  walk  from  the  distant  moun- 
tain gives  us  a  measure  of  its  distance  and  so  of  its  size.  This  fact, 
that  the  perception  of  shape  requires,  as  it  were,  an  act  of  judgment  on 
the  part  of  the  observer,  makes  the  use  of  shape  in  landscape  com- 
position a  particularly  subtle  thing,  because  the  visual  aspect  of  the 
shape  of  an  object,  dependent  as  it  is  on  many  modifying  circumstances 
may  be  something  quite  different  from  the  actual  physical  shape  of 
the  object  which  might  be  determined,  for  instance,  by  touch  or 
measurement. 

In  a  landscape  composition,  our  attention  will  be  attracted  to  an  Individuality 

object  because  of  its  shape  when  that  shape  is  easily  recognizable,  and  tf'^o^?,"-  Shape 
■  •      I  1      r  ■-r-ii  1      •  r     1  ^^  Landscape 

It  may  be  recognizable  for  several  reasons.     The  relation  of  the  parts  Composition 

which  make  up  the  shape  may  be  so  simple,  so  obvious,  so  readily 
understood,  that  the  object  so  shaped  appeals  to  us  at  once  as  a  unified 
and  separate  entity.  Or  the  shape  may  be  one  with  which  we  are 
thoroughly  familiar,  and  therefore  it  may  attract  our  interest,  because 
we  are  trained  to  see  it,  and  because  it  has  more  associations  in  our 
mind.  A  shape  may  attract  attention  because  of  its  unity  through 
segregation  from  or  contrast  with  the  rest  of  the  composition ;  for  in- 
stance, a  Lombardy  poplar  standing  up  among  a  group  of  willows,  just 
as  in  a  less  degree  a  willow  among  a  group  of  poplars.  (See  Plate  36,  or 
the  cypresses  and  stone  pines  in  Drawing  XIV,  opp.  p.  112.) 

A  shape  will  be  orderly  and  may  be  beautiful  according  to  the 
completeness  of  the  relation  of  its  parts  in  repetition  or  sequence  or 
balance,  and  order  or  unity  of  shape  so  arising  will,  as  we  have  said, 
give  an  object  a  more  definite  individuality  and  so  a  greater  importance, 
a  greater  ability  to  attract  attention  in  the  composition.  (See  Draw- 
ing XXV,  opp.  p.  196.) 

Shapes  will  have  individuality  in  composition  also  as  they  attract 
attention  to  themselves  according  to  ideas  which  they  arouse  in  the 
mind.  A  shape  may  owe  its  interest  to  the  fact  that  it  expresses  the 
work  of  man,  as,  for  instance,  a  piece  of  topiary  work  (see  Drawing  VI, 


loo LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

opp.  p.  48),  or  it  may  be  the  expression  of  the  unhindered  power  of 
nature,  as  the  typical  growth  of  a  tree.  (See  Plate  9.)  The  shape 
may  have  interest  not  for  itself  but  from  something  which  it  symbolizes 
or  represents,  for  instance,  a  letter  or  a  symbol  like  a  crown  in  topiary 
work,  or  a  statue,  in  which  part  of  the  interest  at  least  is  aroused  by 
the  action  or  the  person  or  animal  represented. 

Different  shapes  will  have  different  emotional  effects  upon  the  ob- 
server as  they  suggest  different  postures  of  his  own  body  with  their 
accompanying  emotions.  A  crouching  or  a  cramped  shape,  for  instance, 
will  produce  quite  a  different  effect  in  the  observer's  mind  from  that 
produced  by  an  aspiring  or  expanding  shape,  and  any  one  sensitive  to 
matters  of  this  kind  will  be  found,  when  he  describes  shapes,  express- 
ing their  emotional  effect  upon  him  by  making  gestures  or  assuming 
attitudes  similar  to  the  shapes  which  he  is  describing.*  (Compare 
the  difference  in  attitude  between  the  pine  in  Plate  12  and  the  cypresses 
in  Drawing  XIII,  opposite.) 
Falue  of  In  landscape  compositions,  the  shape  relation  of  the  various  objects 

Shapes  and  their  ^jjj  laj-p-ely  influence  the  excellence  of  the  composition  entirely  apart 
in  Composition  from  any  considerations  of  what  the  objects  themselves  may  be.  The 
repetition  of  a  pyramidal  shape,  for  instance,  here  in  a  spruce  tree, 
there  in  the  gable  of  a  house,  and  again  in  a  distant  mountain,  may 
give  a  compositional  unity  to  a  landscape.  (Compare  the  repetition  of 
rounded  shapes  in  Drawing  XXV,  opp.  p.  196.)  A  sequence  of  shapes, 
perhaps  first  a  stretch  of  river  and  then  a  narrow  strip  of  meadow, 
and  then  a  piece  of  road  seen  in  sharp  perspective,  may  carry  the  eye 
in  a  certain  direction  to  the  dominant  object  in  the  composition,  or 
perhaps  offset  and  balance  a  contrary  sequential  effect  elsewhere  in 
the  field  of  view.  A  landscape  composition  may  be  balanced  by  the 
equality  of  interest  attracted,  for  instance,  by  the  definite  and  sharply 
outlined  shape  of  a  rock  on  one  side  of  the  picture  and  perhaps  a  less 
definite  though  larger  form  made  by  a  mass  of  shrubbery  on  the  other 
side  of  the  composition.  Of  course  it  is  rare  that  our  attention  is  held 
by  an  object  purely  on  account  of  its  shape,  though  it  often  is  attracted 
for  this  reason.  Objects  once  perceived  are  likely  to  hold  the  attention 
rather  for  some  associational  interest ;    but  the  shape  of  objects  in  a 

*  Cf.  Chapter  II,  p.  14. 


Draurlng  trj  Henry  P.  WhiU 

GATEWAY  TO  ORA^NGE  GARDEN,  VILLA  PALMIERI 


XIII 


LANDSCAPE     COMPOSITION loi 

composition,  entirely  of  itself,  is  a  fundamental  and  unescapable  fac- 
tor which  will  affect  many  observers  similarly,  and  should  be  studied 
first  by  the  designer,  however  much  the  results  of  this  study  may  be 
modified  by  the  considerations  of  color,  texture,  and  the  infinite  variety 
of  effects  from  association.      (See  the  shape  composition  in  Plate  i.) 

When  we  speak  of  the  size  of  an  object  we  are  using  merely  a  rela-  Size,  Scale, 
tive  term  :  a  thing  is  large  or  small  entirely  according  to  the  standard  '^"'^  ^"'^w'^' 
with  which  it  is  compared.  Our  only  direct  visual  perception  of  size 
consists  in  the  size  of  the  image  of  the  object  on  the  retina,  and  this 
being  dependent  also  on  the  distance  of  the  object  from  the  observer, 
size,  like  shape,  can  be  appreciated  with  any  accuracy  only  as  we  bring 
our  experience  and  what  we  have  learned  through  other  senses  to  bear 
in  making  deductions  from  our  visual  impressions. 

We  use  the  word  scale  to  denote  the  relative  size  of  objects.  The  Absolute  and 
terms  absolute  scale  and  absolute  size  are  used  in  speaking  of  the  ■^"^''"''^ 
relation  of  the  size  of  any  given  object  to  a  definitely  designated 
standard,  as  a  linear  foot.  Inasmuch,  however,  as  the  realizing  sense 
which  we  have  of  any  such  absolute  standard  depends  inevitably  on 
its  relation  to  the  dimensions  of  our  own  bodies,  we  may  say  for  all 
practical  purposes  that  absolute  scale  is  the  relation  of  an  object  to 
the  size  of  a  man.  Relative  scale  is  the  relative  size  of  objects  within 
a  given  composition ;  for  example,  we  say  that  the  relative  scale  in  a 
Japanese  garden  might  be  similar  to  the  relative  scale  in  a  natural 
Japanese  landscape.  The  objects  in  the  one  case  are  absolutely  very 
small,  in  the  other  case  of  normal  size,  but  their  relative  size  in  the  two 
cases  would  be  somewhat  the  same. 

In  any  landscape  composition  the  absolute  scale  of  the  objects  may  Indication  of 
be  established  by  the  introduction  of  anything  which  shows  the  height  ^"^    ,  ^^ 
of  a  man.     (See  Plate  7  and  Drawing  XIII,  opp.  p.  100.)     Men  them-  Composition 
selves  are  the  best  measuring  rods,  as  is  felt  by  the  architect  who  intro- 
duces figures  into  his  drawings  for  this  very  purpose ;    but  more  per- 
manent objects,  flights  of  steps,  balustrades,  handrails,  door  openings, 
seats  and  so  on,  which  have  definite  sizes  themselves  to  fit  them  for 
the  use  of  man,  will  serve  the  same  purpose.     (See  Plate  34.)     As  we 
have  said,  the  apparent  size  of  an  object  visually  perceived  depends 
not  only  on  its  actual  size  but  also  on  its  distance  from  the  eye,  and 


I02 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

therefore  matters  of  scale  and  of  distance  in  landscape  composition 
are  inextricably  bound  up  together.*  A  series  of  objects  of  known  size 
in  a  landscape  serves,  as  does  the  stadia  rod  of  the  engineer,  to  deter- 
mine the  distance  from  the  observer  to  various  parts  of  the  landscape ; 
and  conversely,  an  object  at  a  known  distance  will  be  known  to  be 
large  or  small  according  to  the  size  of  the  image  in  the  eye  of  the  ob- 
server. (See  Drawing  XI,  opp.  p.  82,  and  Plate  21.)  In  architectural 
design,  this  matter  of  scale  is  more  completely  under  the  control  of  the 
designer.  He  may  repeat  throughout  his  building  or  throughout  his 
group  of  buildings  objects  of  recognizably  the  same  size,  and  almost 
inevitably  this  size  will  be  definitely  related  to  the  size  of  a  man.  In 
landscape  design,  however,  in  those  cases  where  architectural  features 
are  not  much  used,  the  elements  of  the  design  will  not  have  so  definite 
and  determinable  a  size.  Nevertheless  within  certain  limits  the  land- 
scape designer  has  at  his  disposal  many  objects  whose  size  may  be 
judged  from  their  appearance.  Some  shrubs  and  many  trees  have  a 
reasonably  predictable  size  at  maturity.  Any  one  noticing  in  a  New 
England  landscape  a  mature  sugar  maple  tree  or  an  orchard  of  gnarled 
apple  trees  would  be  able  to  tell  with  some  accuracy  their  size  and 
consequently  the  size  of  the  landscape  about  them,  because  he  would 
know  from  experience  that  these  trees  attain  a  certain  size  only  when 
they  have  attained  such  an  appearance. 
Effects  of  This  relation  of  our  visual  perceptions  of  size  and  of  distance  puts 

Perspective  j^^q  ^}^g  hands  of  the  landscape  designer  a  considerable  power  of  modify- 

ing the  apparent  extent  of  the  landscape  in  his  design,  or  less  frequently 
the  apparent  size  of  the  elements  in  it.f  By  slightly  diminishing  the 
actual  size  of  distant  objects,  they  may  thereby  be  made  to  seem  more 
distant.  By  so  subdividing  the  foreground,  for  instance,  as  to  make 
an  object  seem  farther  away  than  it  really  is,  its  apparent  size  may  be 
increased.  What  we  call  the  laws  of  perspective  are  merely  the  rela- 
tions which  we  have  found  to  exist  between  the  actual  size,  shape,  and 
location  of  objects  in  the  world  and  their  visual  appearance  to  an  ob- 
server.    That  it  is  the  appearance  of  things  in  perspective  and  not  their 

*  Cf.  Hugo  Koch's  Der  Optische  Maszstab  in  der  Gartenkunst,  in  Gartenkunst,  Feb. 
and  Apr.  1915.     (See  References.) 
f  Cf.  Illusions,  p.  120. 


LANDSCAPE    COMPOSITION 103 

actual  characteristics  nor  their  location  in  plan  nor  their  relation  in 
elevation  in  which  must  lie  their  compositional  excellence,  is  a  fact 
which  even  the  experienced  designer  must  force  himself  to  bear  con- 
stantly in  mind.  As  seen  from  a  chosen  definite  point  of  view^,  objects 
may  be  made  dominant  or  subordinate  in  the  composition,  may  be 
made  in  effect  large  or  small,  may  be  led  up  to  and  enframed  by  other 
objects,  purely  according  to  their  relative  positions  in  relation  to  the 
observer.  It  is  a  fact  however  that  diminution  of  size  on  account  of 
distance  will  not  subordinate  an  object  in  nature  to  the  extent  that  the 
same  diminution  of  size  would  subordinate  an  object  in  a  painting. 
If  the  distant  object  attracts  the  attention  at  all,  the  eye  may  be  focused 
upon  it  and  a  great  deal  of  its  detail  may  yet  be  made  out.  Its  size 
may  be  judged  by  its  relation  in  perspective  and  its  total  effect  may 
not  be  so  very  different  from  what  it  would  have  been  if  it  had  been 
nearer  to  the  observer.* 

Texture  is  the  result  of  the  shape  and  size  of  parts,  but  of  parts  so  Texture 
small  that  in  the  aggregate  they  tell  as  a  continuous  surface  and  not  as 
discrete  parts  or  objects  in  a  composition.  The  texture  of  velvet  de- 
pends on  the  character  and  weave  of  the  thread ;  the  texture  of  a  tree 
on  the  character  and  disposition  of  the  leaves  ;  the  texture  of  a  distant 
mountainside  on  the  form  of  the  trees  which  clothe  it.  The  relation 
between  form  and  texture,  therefore,  is  merely  one  of  scale,  and  any 
texture  may  be  seen  to  be,  on  closer  inspection,  an  aggregation  of 
forms.  Texture  is  quite  as  frequently  perceived  by  feeling  as  by  sight, 
and  much  of  its  usual  effect  lies  in  awakened  tactual  memories,  as 
witness  such  common  descriptive  terms  for  texture  as  smooth,  soft, 
harsh.  (Compare  the  textures  in  the  Frontispiece,  Plate  18,  Draw- 
ing XXVI,  opp.  p.  198,  Drawing  XX,  opp.  p.  158,  and  Drawing  VI, 
opp.  p.  48.)  ^  ^  ^  S^^/^  Relation 

There  is  a  certain  scale  relation  which  must  be  preserved  between  of  Texture  to 

Size  and  Shape 

*  "  One  of  the  great  lessons  of  psychology  is  the  importance  of  trifles,  and  when  all 
our  labour  is  done  we  may  find  the  eye  returning  again  and  again,  not  to  fountain  or 
lawn  or  parterre,  but  to  some  object  so  trivial  that  it  can  be  hidden  by  a  single  finger  of 
the  outstretched  hand  ;  some  tiny  cloud  of  blue  which  tells  of  a  far-off  mountain,  some 
gleam  of  distant  water  half  seen  between  the  trees,  or  green  depth  of  a  forest  glade." 

Sitwell,  An  Essay  on  the  Making  of  Gardens,  p.  69-70. 


I04 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

the  texture  of  an  object  and  its  size  and  shape.  A  distant  screen 
plantation  may  be  made  of  separate  large  trees,  but  still  remain  one 
mass.  A  border  for  a  flower  bed  in  a  well-kept  formal  garden  must  be 
composed  of  small  and  close-growing  plants,  and  often  these  plants 
must  be  clipped  that  the  border  may  seem  of  continuous  texture  and 
not  a  series  of  individual  plants.*  In  the  materials  used  by  the  land- 
scape architect  there  is  the  greatest  possible  variation  in  texture :  from 
the  smoothness  of  calm  water  or  polished  marble  to  the  harshness  of  a 
"Spanish  bayonet"  or  a  shattered  ledge;  from  the  cloudy  fineness  of  a 
smoke-tree  in  bloom  to  the  coarseness  of  "elephant's  ear"  and  other 
tropical  plants.  Quite  apart  from  the  effect  of  larger  form,  therefore, 
the  interest  of  the  beholder  may  be  held  or  directed,  the  importance  of 
an  object  in  the  design  may  be  increased  or  diminished,  purely  through 
the  effect  of  texture  in  the  composition.  A  flower  bed  of  various  colors 
may  be  unified  by  the  repetition  of  a  similar  texture  throughout ;  the 
unity  of  a  lawn  or  of  a  wheatfield  is  due  to  the  effect  of  its  consistency 
of  texture  of  clipped  turf  or  standing  grain.  The  effect  of  distance  in 
perspective  may  be  increased  by  a  sequence  of  textures  growing  finer 
as  they  recede  from  the  observer.  A  clipped  tree  of  solid  texture  or  a 
plant  with  dark  and  shiny  leaves  may  be  balanced  by  another  which 
through  the  same  texture  has  the  same  ability  to  attract  attention  in 
the  design,  but  in  this  case  the  balance  if  satisfactory  is  due  primarily 
to  the  shape,  or  perhaps  the  color,  and  not  wholly  to  the  texture.  A 
balance  between  two  objects  otherwise  similar  may  be  upset  by  striking 
variation  in  texture,  but  balance  in  texture  alone  is  generally  less 
effective  than  balance  in  shape  or  color. 
Color  It  is  not  in  the  province  of  this  book  to  discuss  in  detail  either  the 

physics  of  light  or  the  esthetic  theory  of  color.  But  some  of  the  work 
of  the  landscape  architect  on  paper  depends  on  color  as  the  painter's 
does,  and  all  of  his  work  out  of  doors  deals  with  colored  objects,  and  is 
constantly,  and  often  greatly,  modified  in  its  apparent  color  and  con- 
sequent effect  by  changes  of  light  and  atmosphere.  Usually  he  cannot 
modify  his  actual  work,  studying  it  and  changing  it  on  the  ground  until 
he  is  satisfied  with  the  effect ;  therefore,  he  must  to  some  extent  predict 
the  effect,  knowing  the  conditions.     A  little  review  of  some  of  the  facts 

*  Cf.  Chapter  IX,  p.  157-158. 


LANDSCAPE     COMPOSITION 105 

of  light  and  color,  especially  out  of  doors,  might  help  him  to  think 
more  clearly  on  the  subject. 

VVe  giv'e  the  name  of  light  to  those  vibrations  of  the  ether  which  are  Color  and 
within  the  range  of  frequency  capable  of  being  perceived  by  the  human  ^'S*' 
eye.  There  are  also  ether  vibrations  faster  and  slower,  but  they  do  not 
affect  our  sense  of  sight.  The  different  frequencies  of  vibration  which 
we  can  see  produce  upon  the  eye  the  effect  of  different  hues,  ranging 
from  the  sensation  of  violet  produced  by  the  fastest  visible  vibrations 
to  that  of  deep  red  produced  by  the  slowest  visible  vibrations.  The 
greater  the  wave  height  of  a  light  of  a  definite  wave  length,  and  so  of  a 
definite  hue,  the  greater  will  be  the  intensity  of  the  hue.  Light  all  of 
which  has  the  same  wave  length  will  produce  upon  the  eye  the  effect 
of  "pure  color,"  that  is,  it  will  be  all  of  the  same  hue.  The  light  of 
the  sun  is  a  mixed  light,  containing  practically  an  infinite  gradation  of 
wave  lengths  corresponding  to  the  gradations  of  frequency  of  vibration 
within  the  limits  which  we  have  already  mentioned.  Red  light  is  the 
least  refrangible  by  a  prism ;  violet  light  is  the  most  so.  Placing  a 
prism  in  the  path  of  a  beam  of  sunlight  will  therefore  separate  this 
mixed  light  into  its  component  hues.  These  are  practically  infinite  in 
number.  For  purposes  of  convenience,  however,  men  have  been  ac- 
customed to  name  only  certain  of  these  hues  and  to  consider  the  others 
as  intermediates  between  them.  The  "colors  of  the  rainbow"  are 
commonly  spoken  of  as  red,  orange,  yellow,  green,  blue,  and  violet. 

When  sunlight  falls  upon  an  object,  it  may  be  sent  back  again  un- 
changed except  in  direction,  as  when  it  is  reflected  from  the  surface  of 
a  perfect  mirror;  or  it  may  be  dispersed  in  many  directions  from  a 
surface  like  frosted  silver  or  white  paper ;  or  it  may  be  broken  up  into 
its  constituent  colors,  as  by  a  prism ;  or  some  of  its  constituent  colors 
may  be  absorbed  and  the  others  only  allowed  to  go  on,  as  by  a  sheet  of 
colored  glass.  The  color  of  ordinary  surfaces,  a  wash  of  water-color, 
for  instance,  is  due  to  this  last  effect.  If  a  surface  is  absolutely  imper- 
vious to  light,  it  reflects  the  light  unchanged  in  color.  If  it  is  at  all 
pervious,  like  paper  or  cloth  or  paint,  the  light  penetrates  and  then  is 
reflected,  at  different  depths  below  the  surface.  And  in  going  through 
the  substance  near  the  surface  of  any  "colored"  material,  certain  defi- 
nite wave  lengths  of  light  are  absorbed,  and  only  the  others  allowed 


io6 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

to  escape.  In  these  ways  different  objects  have  different  colors,*  that 
is,  they  send  to  the  eye  light  of  certain  wave  lengths  only,  which  pro- 
duce the  sensations  of  certain  colors.  By  what  physical  machinery  the 
eye  perceives  these  colors  we  do  not  yet  know  with  certainty.  It 
seems  to  be  determined,  however,  that  our  primary  color  sensations 
are  red,  green,  violet-blue.  At  least  it  is  the  fact  that  the  effect  of  any 
other  colors  of  the  spectrum  may  be  produced  upon  the  eye  by  an 
appropriate  mixture  of  beams  of  light  of  these  colors  thrown  upon  a 
white  surface.  Red  and  green  so  mixed  make  yellow;  yellow  and 
violet-blue  make  white. 

The  effects  of  pigment  colors  are  quite  different.  With  them,  the 
accepted  primaries  are  red,  yellow,  and  blue.  Appropriate  mixtures  of 
pigments  of  these  colors  will  produce  any  other  color.  Red  and  yellow 
make  orange ;  orange  and  blue  make  black.  The  reason  for  this  dif- 
ference between  pigment  and  spectral  color  lies  in  the  physical  fact 
which  we  have  already  pointed  out,  —  that  the  color  of  a  pigment  is 
due  to  its  having  absorbed  all  the  light  which  falls  upon  it  except  that 
to  which  it  owes  its  color.  The  light  sent  back  from  a  surface  on 
which  there  are  two  pigments,  therefore,  is  only  such  light  as  is  absorbed 
by  neither.  The  greater  the  number  of  different  translucent  pigments 
which  are  applied  to  a  surface,  therefore,  the  darker  that  surface  be- 
comes. On  the  other  hand,  the  greater  the  number  of  different  colored 
lights  which  shine  upon  a  surface,  the  brighter  it  becomes.  One  is  a 
subtraction,  the  other  an  addition  of  light. 
Hue,  Intensity,  In  considering  color  composition,  we  are  concerned  not  much  with 
and  Value  in  colored  lights  as  such,  but  rather  with  colored  surfaces  seen  close  to- 
sition  gether  or  in  immediate  succession.     Each  surface  will  have  its  own  effect 

in  the  composition  according  as  the  light  which  is  sent  out  from  it  is  in 
any  way  different  from  that  sent  out  from  the  adjoining  surfaces. 
These  differences  may  be  of  three  kinds  :  differences  of  hue,  differences 
in  intensity,  or  richness  of  the  hue,  and  differences  of  value,  that  is, 
differences  in  the  strength  of  light-effect  upon  the  eye.  This  value  is 
relatively  high  in  the  case  of  white  surfaces,  because  they  send  back 
nearly  all  the  light  that  they  receive.     It  is  high  in  the  case  of  surfaces 

*  The  term  color  or  local  color  of  an  object  is  commonly  taken  to  mean  the 
color  that  an  object  shows  when  illumined  by  white  light. 


LANDSCAPE    COMPOSITION 


107 


of  lemon-yellow  and  similar  hues  because  the  light  which  they  reflect 
has  been  only  slightly  diminished  in  its  illuminating  eff'ect  by  the 
absorption  of  that  portion  of  the  original  white  light  which  was  not 
yellow.  The  value  is  low  in  the  case  of  blue  and  violet,  because  a 
violet  pigment,  in  removing  the  other  hues,  has  removed  nearly  all  the 
illuminating  power  of  the  light.  In  a  black  surface,  in  which  all  the 
mixed  hues  of  the  original  light  have  been  absorbed,  value  is  at  its 
lowest. 

It  is  apparently  the  fact  that  in  certain  very  general  ways  most  Emotional 
people  are  affected  emotionally  in  the  same  manner  by  the  same  colors.*  ^^f'-^  °^ 
It  would  appear  that  red  and  orange  usually  produce  an  exciting  effect, 
green  a  soothing  effect,  bluish  purple  a  depressing  effect.  The  fact 
however  that  it  is  almost  if  not  quite  impossible  to  eliminate  from  any 
experiments  the  effect  of  the  size  and  shape  of  the  colored  areas  ob- 
served and  various  associational  results  of  the  colors,  makes  the  data 
which  we  have  in  this  direction  still  uncertain  in  its  value  in  color- 
design. 

It  is  a  fact  of  every-day  experience  that,  to  almost  all  observers.  Color 
certain  colors,  when  applied  to  juxtaposed  surfaces,  produce  a  pleasing  ii<^^i^ony 
efi"ect,  and  certain  others,  similarly  juxtaposed,  produce  an  unpleasing 
effect.  What  are  all  the  physical  and  psychological  causes  of  these 
facts,  we  do  not  as  yet  know,  but  as  to  what  combinations  of  colors  are 
pleasing  and  what  displeasing,  we  have  a  great  amount  of  testimony 
of  the  best  possible  kind,  namely,  such  of  the  paintings  of  all  the  mas- 
ters of  color  as  have  been  preserved  to  us  since  the  beginning  of  art.  It 
is  possible  by  a  careful  study  and  comparison  of  these,  by  careful  con- 
sideration of  what  color  combinations  are  pleasing  to  us  and  to  those 
whose  opinion  we  know,  to  make  definite  empirical  statements  in  this 
regard  which  are  of  very  great  value  to  us  when  using  color  in  design. 

The  colors  as  they  appear  in  the  spectrum  are  a  sequence,  passing 
by  degrees  from  one  distinguishable  color  to  the  next.  There  is  no 
spectral  color  of  violet-red  or  red-violet,  intermediate  between  the 
violet  of  one  end  of  the  spectrum  and  the  red  of  the  other  end.     Al- 

*  The  reader  is  referred  to  the  description  and  analysis  of  experiments  given  in  an 
article  by  Newton  A.  Wells,  entitled  A  Description  of  the  Affective  Character  of  the 
Colors  of  the  Spectrum,  in  The  Psychological  Bulletin,  June  15,  1910,  vol.  7,  p.  181-195. 


2o8 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

though  the  colors  of  the  spectrum  cannot  be  exactly  matched  by  pig- 
ments, they  can  be  approximately  imitated,  and  when  the  more  com- 
monly recognized  colors  —  red,  orange,  yellow,  green,  blue,  and  violet  — 
are  arranged  in  this  order,  proper  mixtures  of  any  two  contiguous  colors 
will  produce  a  series  of  colors  intermediate  between  these  two.  More- 
over, mixtures  of  violet  and  red  will  produce  similar  intermediates 
between  these  two  colors,  not  found  in  the  spectrum ;  and  thus  pig- 
ment colors  may  be  arranged  in  a  closed  circuit,  passing  through  the 
whole  sequence  of  color  by  as  many  gradual  transitions  as  we  may  desire. 

If  pigment  colors  are  thus  arranged  in  a  circle,  properly  spaced,  all 
of  the  same  value  and  of  the  same  intensity,  it  will  be  found  that  a 
mixture  of  pigments  of  colors  diametrically  opposite  on  the  circle  — 
for  instance,  violet  and  yellow,  or  red  and  green  —  will  in  every  case 
produce  a  neutral  color.  Such  pairs  of  colors  are  called  complementary. 
A  neutral  color  will  similarly  be  produced  by  mixing  all  the  colors  to- 
gether, or  by  mixing  any  number  of  colors  which  are  symmetrically 
disposed  about  the  circle,  as  for  instance,  violet,  orange,  and  green. 

Experience  shows  that  juxtapositions  in  composition  of  two  ap- 
proximately complementary  *  colors,  or  of  three  or  six  or  any  number  of 
colors  taken  nearly  symmetrically  about  the  color  circle,  are  likely  to 
be  pleasing.  Why  this  is  so  we  cannot  tell,  though  it  may  be  conjec- 
tured that  the  pleasure  is  related  in  some  way  to  the  complete 
or  balanced  appeal,  so  to  speak,  which  colors  so  chosen  might  make 
to  the  fundamental  sensitiveness  of  our  perceptive  apparatus  to  red, 
green,  and  violet-blue.  In  any  case  the  pleasure  of  color  is  so  much 
modified  and  complicated  in  practice  by  the  size  and  shape  of  the 
colored  objects,  that  it  is  extremely  difficult,  as  we  have  said,  to  deter- 
mine just  how  much  of  the  observed  effect  is  due  to  the  color  alone. 
We  may  say,  however,  using  the  two  latter  terms  rather  metaphorically, 
that  pleasure  from  colors  in  composition  will  come  from  color  harmony, 
color  balance,  or  color  rhythm. f 

*  Cf.  Experiments  on  the  Esthetic  of  Light  and  Colour.  On  Combinations  oj  Two 
Colours,  by  Emma  S.  Baker,  in  University  of  Toronto  Studies,  Psychological  Series,  vol. 
I,  1900,  p.  201-249. 

t  Cf.  Dr.  Denman  W.  Ross,  A  Theory  of  Pure  Design.  Boston,  Houghton, 
Mifflin  &  Co.,  1907. 


LANDSCAPE    COMPOSITION 109 

If  two  or  more  objects  are  to  be  harmonious  in  color,  they  must 
have  some  color-characteristics  in  common.  They  must  be  similar  in 
value,  or  similar  in  hue,  or  similar  in  intensity.  If  they  are  to  avoid 
monotony,  they  must  of  course,  being  similar  in  one  or  two  of  these 
characteristics,  be  agreeably  different  in  some  other. 

A  composition  of  colored  areas  may  be  made  harmonious  in  color, 
then,  In  three  simple  ways.  All  the  colors  may  be  made  to  contain 
some  admixture  of  some  one  chosen  hue,  —  all  the  colors  having  a  yellow 
tinge  for  instance.  The  result  of  carrying  this  to  the  extreme  would 
be  that  all  objects  in  the  composition  would  be  of  the  same  hue,  an 
achievement  of  harmony  but  also  very  possibly  of  monotony. 

All  the  colors  may  be  made  to  have  the  same  value,  that  is,  to 
appear  to  send  the  same  amount  of  light  to  the  eye  per  unit  area  of 
surface.  When  dealing  with  pigment-colored  areas,  and  choosing  any 
value  higher  than  black  and  lower  than  white,  all  the  colors  may  be 
made  to  have  this  value  by  the  proper  admixture  of  black  or  white  as 
the  case  may  require.  If  the  values  be  all  absolutely  the  same,  the 
resultant  harmony  may  be  monotonous. 

All  the  colors  may  be  made  to  have  a  similar  intensity.  Since  the 
maximum  intensity  of  different  pigment  colors  occurs  at  different 
values,*  changing  the  intensity  of  a  color  by  adding  more  of  the  same 
color,  so  to  speak,  will  probably  change  its  value  as  well.  If  the  value 
be  kept  the  same,  the  intensity  can  still  be  changed  by  an  admixture 
of  gray  of  the  same  value.  This  process  applied  to  several  colors  would 
tend  to  produce  a  harmony  something  like  that  of  the  first  case  which 
we  have  just  discussed,  a  harmony  of  hue,  by  toning  the  whole  com- 
position toward  a  uniform  gray. 

Colored  areas  may  be  pleasantly  related  in  the  same  composition, 
also,  not  because  of  harmony  through  a  similarity  In  hue,  or  value,  or 
Intensity,  but  because  of  an  equal  amount  of  difference  between  each 
tone  and  the  ground  tone  on  which  they  all  lie.  This  difference  may  be 
a  difference  of  hue,  —  for  Instance,  two  spots,  one  of  green  and  one  of 
orange,  on  a  ground  tone  of  yellow.  It  may  be  a  difference  of  value, 
—  for  instance,  one  spot  of  dark  green  and  one  of  light  green  on  a 
ground  tone  of  red  of  a  middle  value.     It  may  be  a  difference  of  in- 

*  Cf.  p.  106-107. 


I  lO 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Color  in 

Landscape 

Composition 


tensity,  —  as  a  spot  of  intense  red  and  a  spot  of  much  neutralized  red  on 
a  ground  tone  of  red  of  a  middle  intensity.  Differences  of  intensity  are 
so  intimately  connected  with  differences  of  hue  and  of  value,  however, 
that  it  is  seldom  that  objects  are  differentiated  by  differences  of  inten- 
sity of  color  alone,  unaffected  by  value  and  hue  also.  This  relation  of 
two  colored  areas  through  the  same  amount  of  color  difference  from 
the  ground  tone  may  be  called,  somewhat  metaphorically,  color  balance. 
The  total  balance  of  the  composition  can  never  be  independent  of  the 
size  and  shape  of  the  areas,  however,  as  we  have  seen.  A  composition 
will  have  special  balance  due  to  color,  for  instance,  when  two  objects 
on  opposite  sides  of  the  axis  of  balance  attract  the  attention  equally 
through  their  contrast,  in  hue,  value,  or  intensity,  with  their  surround- 
ings. In  this  way  a  balance  might  exist  on  a  neutral  background  of 
middle  value  between  a  small  object  of  a  high  value  and  intense  color 
and  a  large  object  of  a  low  value  and  less  intense  color.  This  balance 
is  plainly  at  bottom  a  balance  of  attention. 

Several  colored  areas  in  a  sequence  may  be  pleasantly  related  be- 
cause there  is  a  progressive  and  ordered  difference  from  each  to  the 
next,  in  value  or  hue  or  intensity,  which  leads  the  attention  in  a  definite 
direction.  The  direction  of  the  attention  will  be  towards  the  end  of  the 
sequence  which  makes  the  greatest  contrast  with  the  background.  A 
neutral  wash  running  from  light  to  dark  on  a  white  surface,  for  in- 
stance, is  unified  by  its  consistent  change  of  value  from  end  to  end, 
and  the  attention  is  drawn  to  the  dark  end,  where  the  contrast  with 
the  background  is  the  greatest.  Such  relation  of  colored  areas 
may  be  called  color  rhythm.  It  is  necessarily  dependent  on  spacial 
relation,  however,  and  is  practically  an  example  of  space  rhythm  in 
which  the  attention  is  carried  along  from  object  to  object  not  by 
size,  shape,  attitude,  and  so  on,  but  by  change  of  color  and  increase 
of  color  contrast. 

The  landscape  architect  must  always  deal  with  the  question  of  color 
in  his  designs.  He  makes  decorative  arrangements  of  the  brilliant 
color  masses  of  his  ffowers  with  the  different  colors  of  his  walks  and 
walls  and  structures  of  painted  wood,  and  he  uses  both  the  orange  and 
crimson  and  purple  of  deciduous  trees  in  the  fall,  and  the  subtler  varia- 
tions of  color  of  summer  foliage.     Even  in  its  summer  guise  the  har- 


LANDSCAPE    COMPOSITION \ii 

mony  of  foliage  color  is  worthy  of  the  designer's  best  attention.*  He 
finds  himself  committed  to  a  study  in  greens,  but,  within  the  limits  of 
this  color  the  possible  variations  in  intensity,  in  value,  and  in  the 
admixture  of  other  hues  give  him  ample  ability  of  differentiation  of  the 
various  parts  of  his  design,  either  in  a  scene  where  the  foliage  is  merely 
a  pleasantly  varied  enframement  of  the  brilliant  color  of  the  flowers, 
or  where,  in  a  landscape  all  foliage  and  sky,  the  delicate  distinctions  of 
grayer  and  browner  tones  of  green  may  tell  for  themselves  at  their  full 
worth.  Where  gray  and  misty  days  are  frequent,  the  landscape  archi- 
tect might  plan  some  portion  of  his  scheme  purposely  to  accent  the  effect 
of  the  atmosphere  by  a  gray  and  delicate  consistency  of  values.  In 
such  an  atmosphere,  too,  subtle  contrasts  of  color  would  be  more  easily 
perceived.  When  a  bright  sun  throws  the  landscape  architect's  work 
into  sharp  contrasts  of  light  and  shadow,  a  harmony  of  values  in  local 
color  would  not  be  particularly  effective.  Under  tropical  skies,  scenes 
can  be  found  of  almost  unbelievable  brilliance  of  color,  consistent  in 
their  harmony  of  intensity,  in  a  high  key,  as  the  artist  looks  at  them, 
but  often  garish  and  unpleasant  when,  translated  into  pigments,  they 
are  seen  among  the  subdued  colors  of  his  studio. 

Through  thousand-times  repeated  experience,  we  have  each  of  us  Light 
learned  to  know  the  appearance  which  most  objects  present  when  light  "■'^"'  ■^'*'"»^ 
falls  upon  them.  We  have  learned  the  sharp-angled  arrangement  of 
lights  and  shadows  which  represents  a  cube  in  sunshine.  We  can  tell 
with  surprising  accuracy  from  the  form  of  delicate  gradation  of  shade 
whether  or  not  a  certain  column  is  truly  cylindrical.  Our  knowledge  of 
shade  and  shadow  is  thus  of  great  service  to  us  in  interpreting  the  in- 
formation of  our  eyes  into  three-dimensional  form  ;  and  the  minor  forms 
which  tell  in  the  aggregate  as  texture  are  interpreted  in  a  similar  way. 
The  smoothness  of  rubbed  sandstone,  the  comparative  roughness  of  a 
clipped  hedge,  are  revealed  to  the  eye  by  their  play  of  little  lights  and 
shadows  almost  as  surely  as  they  might  be  revealed  by  touch  to  the 
hand. 

This  effect  of  light  and  shade  upon  the  surface  of  objects,  and  the  Light  and 
falling  of  a  shadow  of  one  object  upon  the  face  of  another,  bears  in  an-  fl^i^„jJ^/jL 
other  way  also  a  very  important  part  in  the  appearance  of  the  various  Composition 

*  Cf.  Chapter  IX,  p.  159-160. 


I  12 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Variability  of 
Light  and 
Shade 


scenes  which  we  behold.  The  masses  of  Hght  and  dark  which  are  formed 
by  the  shadows  assume  of  themselves,  through  theur  contrast  of  value,  ^ 
great  importance  as  visual  units  in  the  design.  Properly  arranged, 
tM'y  may  cooperate  with  the  actual  forms,  enhance  them  and  lead  the 
attention  to  where  it  should  lie  in  the  composition,  as,  for  instance,  where 
a  statue,  perhaps  somewhat  insignificant  in  size,  is  made  sufficient  for 
its  place  at  the  end  of  a  vista  by  standing  in  a  blaze  of  sunlight  against 
a  background  of  shadowy  green.  On  the  other  hand,  an  ill-considered 
falling  of  the  shadows  may  nofronly  confuse  the  effect  of  masg  relations 
designed  to  play  definite  parts  in  the  composition,  overlaying  and  cut- 
ting up  designed  form  with  shadow  form,  but  also  m^y  create  false,  and 
unlooked  for  points  of  interest,  directing  the  attention  quite  otherwise 
than  as  the  designer  intended.  Shadows  may  be  definitely  designed 
to  serve  as  units  in  a  composition.  A  great  shadow  may  fall  upon  the 
foreground  lawn,  enframing  and  setting  off  the  more  distant  sunny 
landscape.  (See  Plate  21.)  The  shadows  of  a  number  of  trees  in  vanish- 
ing perspective  may  diversify  and  give  scale  to  an  area  of  grassland,  "• 
or  the  netted  shadow  of  the  winter  branches  of  a  tree  may  very 
pleasantly  decorate  the  bare  wall  of  a  building.  Or  it  may  be  that 
instead  of  falling  in  broad  areas,  breaking  the  landscape  into  large 
and  restful  masses,  the  shadows  may  fall  in  a  scintillation  of  light  and 
dark,  pleasantly  flecking  the  ground  under  the  trees,  moving  in  the 
wind  and  giving  to  the  whole  scene  a  certain  effect  of  delicacy  and 
gayety.     (See  Plate  19.) 

It  is  often  desirable  to  have  in  a  design  some  area  the  very  purpose 
of  which  shall  be  that  it  is  a  place  of  shade ;  or  another  place  of  open 
greensward  and  brilliant  flowers  may  be  designed  to  be  at  its  best  only 
in  the  full  blaze  of  the  sun.  This  subdivision  of  design  into  units  of 
sun  and  units  of  shadow  was  well  understood  by  the  Italians,*  dwelling 
in  a  climate  where  the  sun  is  unusually  brilliant  and  the  shade  corre- 
spondingly precious. 

As  the  sun  moves  through  the  sky  throughout  the  day,  the  shadows 
change  and  fall  differently,  and  different  objects  in.^e  design  may 
emerge  from  the  obscurity  of  shadow  to  a  temporary  importance  of 
sunshine  and  sink  again  to  shadow.     And  the  shadows  themselves,  long 

*  Cf.  Chapter  IV,  p.  41. 


> 


k,..^em--' 


LANDSCAPE    COMPOSITION  113 

and  important  in  the  early  morning,  creep  close  to  the  bases  of  the 
trees  at  noon  to  stretch  themselves  peacefully  across  the  lawn  again 
as  the  sun  sets.  The  long  shadows  are  likely  to  be  the  most  interest- 
ing in  a  composition  :  certainly  they  do  most  to  display  the  modeling 
of  the  objects  on  which  they  fall,  and  particularly  to  show  the  delicate 
gradations  of  rolling  lawns  or  more  distant  and  larger  landscapes. 
Often,  since  the  designer  may  not  have  a  perfect  picture  at  all  times  of 
the  day,  he  chooses  the  later  hours  when,  too,  the  owners  of  a  place  or 
the  frequenters  of  a  park  are  most  likely  to  have  the  leisure  to  enjoy 
the  scene,  to  produce  his  most  complete  composition,  using  the  after- 
noon shadows  as  important  elements  in  the  design.  When,  in  late 
afternoon,  objects  in  the  landscape  are  seen  against  the  sunset  sky, 
with  their  shadow  side  toward  the  spectator,  and  still  more,  in  twilight 
when  the  modeling  of  the  individual  objects  is  no  longer  brought  out 
by  the  direct  sunlight,  the  landscape  falls  into  its  main  and  simple 
masses,  and  its  pictorial  composition  is  often  best  observed.* 

The  light  which  falls  on  the  surface  of  the  earth  and  which,  reflected  Atmosphere 
thence  to  our  eyes,  enables  us  to  see  the  objects  in  a  landscape,  must  '^^^  ^'" . 
of  course  pass  through  the  atmosphere  in  going  from  the  sun  to  any  Perspeaive 
object  and  from  that  object  to  us.     Even  the  clearest  atmosphere  has 
in  suspension  in  it  very  mnute  particles  of  water   and  perhaps  of  dust. 
When  the  mixed  light  of  the  sun  goes  through  this  atmosphere,  the 
blue  rays,  being  of  shorter  wave  length,  are  more  abundantly  reflected 
from  these  minute  particles,  and  the  finer  the  particles  the  more  nearly 
will  this  reflected  light  approach  to  a  pure  blue.     This  accounts  for  the 

*"In  fact,  twilight  does,  what  an  improver  ought  to  do:  it  connects  what  was 
before  scattered ;  it  fills  up  staring,  meagre  vacancies ;  it  destroys  edginess ;  and 
by  giving  shadow  as  well  as  light  to  water,  at  once  increases  both  its  brilliancy  and 
softness.  It  must,  however,  be  observed,  that  twilight,  while  it  takes  off  the  edginess 
of  those  objects  which  are  below  the  horizon,  more  sensibly  marks  the  outline  of  those 
which  are  above  it,  and  opposed  to  the  sky ;  and  consequently  discovers  the  defects, 
as  well  as  the  beauties  of  their  forms.  From  this  circumstance  improvers  may  learn 
a  very  useful  lesson,  that  the  outline  against  the  sky  should  be  particularly  attended 
to,  so  that  nothing  lumpy,  meagre,  or  discordant  should  be  there;  for  at  all  times, 
in  such  a  situation,  the  form  is  made  out,  but  most  of  all  when  twilight  has  melted 
the  other  parts  together." 

Price,  Essays  on  the  Picturesque,  1810,  v.  i,  p.  153. 


114 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

blue  of  the  sky,  or  of  a  cloud  of  smoke.  Some  of  the  blue  being  re- 
flected, the  remaining  light,  which  goes  through  the  atmosphere,  has 
relatively  more  of  the  hues  more  or  less  complementary  to  blue,  that 
is,  the  reds  and  yellows.  And  these  colors  will  increase  in  intensity  as 
the  sun  nears  the  horizon  and  as,  consequently,  its  rays  travel  for  a 
greater  distance  through  the  earth's  atmosphere  and  particularly 
through  its  lower  layers  where  the  minute  reflecting  particles  are  most 
abundant.  This  accounts  for  the  colors  of  sunrise  and  sunset.  The 
larger  the  particles  in  the  atmosphere,  however,  the  more  will  they 
reflect  light  of  all  colors,  until  in  the  case  of  a  fog,  a  cloud,  a  snowstorm, 
the  light  which  they  reflect  is  practically  the  same  in  hue  as  the  light 
which  they  receive. 

The  same  modifications  will  occur  in  the  light  which  comes  to  our 
eyes  from  the  objects  in  a  landscape.  When  a  sun-illumined  object  is 
near  the  observer  so  that  the  effect  of  the  atmosphere  between  the 
object  and  the  eye  is  not  noticeable,  the  portions  of  the  object  which 
are  in  sunshine  will  show  their  local  color  *  modified  only  by  the  color 
of  the  sunlight  as  it  is  under  the  atmospheric  conditions  of  the  par- 
ticular case.  The  portions  of  the  object  which  are  in  shade  or  shadow 
will  show  their  local  color  modified  by  the  color  of  the  light  with  which 
they  are  illumined.  This  must  be  reflected  light.  If  it  proceeds  from 
the  open  sky  it  will  be,  as  we  have  seen,  blue,  and  the  local  color  of  the 
object  in  shadow  will  be  modified  accordingly.!  If  it  is  reflected  from 
surrounding  colored  objects,  it  will  partake  of  their  color  in  each  case 
and  the  color  of  the  object  in  the  shadow  will  be  that  which  its  local 
color  enables  it  to  reflect  from  the  colored  light  which  it  receives.  When 
a  considerable  extent  of  sun-illumined  atmosphere  intervenes  between 
the  observer  and  the  object,  these  conditions  are  modified.  The  light 
which  the  object  itself  reflects  from  its  sun-illumined  and  from  its 
shadowed  parts  comes  to  the  eye  mixed  with  and  noticeably  modified 

*  See  footnote,  p.  io6. 

t"The  shadows  of  verdure  always  approximate  to  blue,  and  so  it  is  with  every 
shadow  of  every  other  thing,  and  they  tend  to  this  colour  more  entirely  when  they  are 
further  distant  from  the  eye,  and  less  in  proportion  as  they  are  nearer." 

Leonardo  da  Vinci's  Note-hooks.  Arranged  and  rendered  into  English  with  In- 
troductions by  Edward  McCurdy.     From  section.  Of  the  Shadows  of  Verdure,  p.  244. 


LANDSCAPE    COMPOSITION 


"S 


by  all  the  light  which  is  reflected  to  the  eye  by  the  minute  particles  in 
the  atmosphere  lying  between  the  eye  and  the  object.  It  is  true  that 
these  particles  prevent  some  portion  of  the  light  from  the  object  from 
reaching  the  eye ;  but  it  is  evident  that,  in  the  case  of  the  shadowed 
portion  of  an  object,  the  light  which  these  particles  contribute  through 
reflection  from  the  sun  is  more  than  that  which  they  stop  off  on  its  way 
from  the  object  to  the  eye.  Consequently  the  farther  an  object  is 
from  the  eye,  the  lighter  and  usually  the  bluer  will  its  shadowed  parts 
appear.  It  is  evident  that  the  illuminated  parts  of  a  distant  object 
will  likewise  be  apparently  changed  to  a  bluer  tinge  with  distance. 
Whether  they  also  become  lighter  or  slightly  darker  with  distance  will 
depend  on  their  local  color  and  upon  whether  the  reflecting  particles 
in  the  air  are  water,  which  sends  much  light  to  the  eye,  or  dust  or 
smoke,  which  send  less.  Generally  it  can  be  said  that  as  an  object 
recedes  from  the  eye,  its  shadows  become  lighter,  the  contrasts  between 
its  shadows  and  lights  become  less,  its  color  becomes  bluer,  until  finally, 
like  a  ver}^  distant  mountain,  it  seems  to  be  almost  of  the  color  and 
brightness  of  the  sky.  If  its  local  color  be  warm,  it  will  apparently  be 
changed  toward  a  color  nearer  to  blue  in  the  spectrum,  and  it  will  prob- 
ably be  somewhat  neutralized  in  color.  If  it  be  already  a  cold  color, 
this  color  will  still  be  modified  towards  blue,  though  in  a  less  noticeable 
degree,  and  it  will  probably  be  intensified. 

This  modification  of  the  color  and  value  of  objects  by  distance  is  Atmospheric 
called   atmospheric  or   aerial   perspective.     Where  the   atmosphere  is  P^^^PfcUve  as  a 
well  filled  with  moisture,  as  for  instance  in  England,  this  effect  of  at-  j„  Landscape 
mospheric  perspective  is  an  extremely  important  one,  not  only  in  the  Composition 
larger  landscapes,  but  even  at  times  in  those  of  relatively  small  size. 
It  arranges  the  various  parts  of  the  view  in  a  sequence  of  planes  of 
distance ;    it  subdues  the  more  distant  detail  and  simplifies  the  distant 
masses  ;  and  so  it  not  only  organizes  the  whole  composition  and  accents 
the  more  pictorially  important  attributes  of  the  elements  in  it  (see  Plates 
23  and  28),  but  it  gives  an  effect  of  mysterj^  (see  again  Plate  20),  a  chance 
for  play  of  imagination,  which  may  lend  an  air  of  distinction  and  charm 
to  a  scene  which  in  the  crystal  atmosphere  of  a  Colorado  summer  might 
appear  sordid  and  full  of  incongruous  detail.     Aerial  perspective  thus 
gives  a  means  of  judging  the  relative  distances  of  objects  in  a  view.     It 


ii6 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

will  however  require  some  acquaintance  with  local  atmospheric  condi- 
tions before  one  may  trust  conclusions  drawn  in  this  way. 

It  is  exceptionally  possible  in  larger  landscape  designs  to  create  an 
appearance  of  somewhat  more  distance  than  actually  exists  by  making 
the  local  color  of  the  more  distant  objects  in  the  composition  bluer. 
It  must  of  course  be  borne  in  mind  that  corresponding  changes  in 
texture  and  size  will  probably  also  be  necessary  if  the  effect  is  to  be  con- 
sistent. In  landscape  painting  and  in  the  rendered  perspectives  of  the 
landscape  architect  an  understanding  of  the  principles  of  aerial  per- 
spective will  give  a  most  desirable  power  to  suggest  the  different  dis- 
tances of  different  objects  from  the  eye.  Indeed  without  this  knowledge 
it  is  quite  impossible  to  produce  a  colored  representation  of  a  landscape 
bearing  anything  more  than  a  diagrammatic  similarity  to  the  scene 
which  it  depicts.  In  representing  a  naturalistic  landscape  the  effects  of 
aerial  perspective  are  particularly  important  because  the  draftsman  has 
not  the  aid,  as  he  has  in  architectural  drawings,  of  a  suggestion  of  rela- 
tive distance  by  the  convergence  of  lines  known  to  be  parallel,  or  of  the 
same  suggestion  through  the  pictorially  different  sizes  of  objects  known 
to  be  in  reality  of  the  same  size. 
Illusions  in  As  we  have  seen,*  our  perception  of  the  objects  about  us  is  not  a 

Composition  complete  and  final  process,  but  consists  rather  in  inferring  and  deducing 
ideas  about  these  objects  from  their  appearance,  that  is,  from  the  data 
which  our  senses  give  us,  data  in  most  cases  insufficient  and  capable  of 
misinterpretation.  The  designer  Is  always  concerned,  therefore,  with 
the  appearance  of  his  design,  and  he  modifies  its  characteristics  having 
in  mind  their  effect  on  this  appearance.!  Usually  the  designer  intends 
that  the  objects  In  his  design  shall  be  what  they  appear  to  be,  either 
because  this  is  necessary  for  some  economic  reason  or  because  they  are 
subject  to  such  inspection  that  any  deceit  would  be  soon  discovered. 
There  are  occasions,  however,  where  the  designer  may  deliberately 
lead  observers  to  draw  false  conclusions  from  what  they  see.  These 
illusions   may  range  all  the  way  from  such  deceptions!  as  imitating 

*  See  Chapter  II,  p.  7. 

t  Cf.  Optical  Effects,  Part  III,  Chapter  II  of  J.  V.  Van  Pelt's  The  Essentials  of 
Composition  as  Applied  to  Art,  new  edition  1913,  p.  118-151. 
X  Cf.  Chapter  II,  Logical  Unity,  p.  17. 


LANDSCAPE    COMPOSITION y7 

a  stone  balustrade  with  painted  tin,  or  painting  windows  on  the 
blank  wall  of  a  house,  to  such  effects  as  concealing  the  end  of  an 
artificial  lake  or  stream  that  it  may  appear  to  have  greater  extent, 
or  constructing  a  pool  of  semi-elliptical  shape  that  it  may  appear  in  a 
certain  aspect  semi-circular.*  Illusions,  being  the  result  of  a  false 
deduction  by  the  observer  from  the  given  premises,  become  increasingly 
easy  to  bring  about  as  the  deduction  is  complicated  and  indirect.  Tex- 
ture being  very  directly  perceived  is  not  readily  made  to  appear  other 
than  it  really  is.  The  color  of  one  object  can  be,  to  be  sure,  modified 
in  its  appearance  by  the  juxtaposition  of  other  colors,  but,  in  the  main, 
color  in  itself,  like  texture  and  for  the  same  reason,  does  not  lend  itself 
to  illusion.  Three-dimensional  shape,  however,  which  requires  for  its 
perception  a  more  complicated  process,  can  often  be  used  to  produce  an 
effect  upon  the  observer  which  would  not  at  all  be  borne  out  by  the  actual 
facts  on  more  careful  examination ;  and  in  matters  of  association  —  a 
still  more  complicated  and  in  some  ways  less  predictable  mental  re- 
action —  the  observer  may  often  still  more  readily  be  induced  to 
come  to  incorrect  conclusions. 

The  first  test  of  a  successful  illusion  is  of  course  that  it  is  not  dis- 
covered. The  effect  on  the  observer  is  then  exactly  as  though  he  had 
actually  seen  what  he  thinks  he  sees.  The  discovery  of  the  illusion, 
however,  will  in  certain  cases  give  him  intellectual  displeasure  which 
will  more  than  offset  whatever  esthetic  pleasure  he  may  have  had  from 
the  undiscovered  deceit.  This  intellectual  displeasure  arises  in  those 
cases  where  an  object  supposed  to  be  of  some  appropriate  material  is 
discovered  to  be  of  an  inappropriate  material,  as  where  a  supposed 
bronze  statue  decorating  a  garden  is  found  to  be  of  painted  plaster. 
The  displeasure  arises  also  where  a  form  apparently  serving  some  func- 
tion proves  to  be  incapable  of  serving  it,  as  for  instance  where  what 
looks  like  a  gateway  at  the  end  of  a  path  proves  to  offer  no  means  of 
entrance,  or  where  what  is  supposed  to  be  a  wall  of  a  garden  house 
proves  to  be  merely  a  bit  of  stage  scenery  with  no  building  behind  it. 
In  both  these  cases,  the  intellectual  displeasure  of  the  observer  comes 

*In  connection  with  this  section,  read  Note-taking  in  Italian  Gardens.  Villa 
Gamheraia,  by  H.  V.  Hubbard,  in  Landscape  Architecture,  Jan.  191 5,  v.  5,  p.  57-66, 
with  plans  and  drawings. 


ii8 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

partly  from  the  incompleteness  and  incongruity  which  he  perceives 
when  he  knows  the  real  facts,  —  an  incongruity  made  the  more  striking 
by  the  previous  false  conclusion  which  he  had  drawn,  —  and  partly 
from  the  sense  of  having  been  duped,  of  having  been  expected  to  accept 
a  poor  thing  for  a  good  one. 

In  certain  other  cases  no  intellectual  displeasure  follows  the  dis- 
covery of  the  illusion.  This  is  true  where,  for  instance,  forms  supposed 
to  be  square  or  circular  have  been  distorted  for  their  effect  in  perspec- 
tive, or  where  what  gives  the  effect  of  a  continuous  straight  axis  of  de- 
sign proves  on  closer  inspection  to  be  broken  at  a  point  where  it  is  im- 
possible to  see  both  parts  of  the  line  at  once.*  Here,  though  the  reality 
is  different  from  the  appearance,  it  is  no  less  good.  In  such  cases  as 
this  the  discovery  of  the  illusion  may  indeed  be  a  source  of  added  pleas- 
ure to  the  observer,  pleasure  perhaps  in  his  own  cleverness  in  having 
made  the  discovery,  pleasure  certainly  in  the  cleverness  of  the  designer 
and  the  skill  of  his  adaptation  of  means  to  ends  to  produce  a  good 
effect  apparently  precluded  by  the  circumstances. 
Illusions  of  One  of  the  commonest  attempts  to  make  one  material  look  like  an- 

Material  other  in  outdoor  construction  is  the  facing  of  a  brick  or  other  wall  with 

cement  stucco  and  the  drawing  of  lines  in  this  stucco  to  represent  stone 
joints.  This  is  often  at  its  worst  when  the  lines  are  supposed  to  imi- 
tate random  rubble  masonry,  but  it  is  usually  bad  because  it  is  not  a 
successful  imitation.  If  the  lines  be  drawn  so  that  they  suggest  a 
reasonable  stone-jointing  and  make  a  pleasant  texture  in  scale  with 
the  wall,  they  need  not  be  bad,  though  something  straightforward 
would  usually  be  better.  Another  way  in  which  the  effect  of  one 
material  is  imitated  in  a  different  material  is  our  method  of  construc- 
tion now  so  frequently  used,  of  building  a  wall  of  concrete  blocks  cast 
in  a  mold  so  that  their  faces  are  supposed  to  resemble  a  rough-pointed 
stone  surface.  This  need  not  be  bad,  but  it  often  is  so,  again  because 
the  imitation  is  not  successful ;  the  concrete  often  comes  from  the 
mold  with  rounded  edges  not  at  all  like  those  of  a  roughly  cut  stone, 
and  when  only  a  few  different  molds  are  used  the  frequent  repetition 
of  exactly  the  same  supposedly  accidental  form  of  surface  becomes 
evident  and  absurd. 

*  Cf.  Isola  Bella,  mentioned  on  p.  120. 


LANDSCAPE    COMPOSITION  119 

Decorative  details  of  all  kinds,  particularly  those  which  are  re- 
peated, are  of  course  much  more  cheaply  cast  in  cement  concrete  than 
they  are  carv^ed  in  stone.  Mechanical  difficulties  prevent  the  casting 
of  very  sharp  edges  or  very  delicate  forms  in  concrete,  and  the  surface 
of  the  concrete  as  it  comes  from  the  mold  is  of  a  rather  unpleasant 
texture,  certainly  not  to  be  mistaken  for  any  other  material.  Such 
decoration,  then,  when  used  to  imitate  stone,  is  likely  to  have  the  double 
disadvantage  of  not  being  a  convincing  imitation  and  of  not  being  in 
itself  as  beautiful  in  form  or  texture  as  the  stone  would  be.  These 
objections  apply,  however,  only  to  poor  imitations  of  stone  by  concrete. 
Cement  concrete,  handled  with  proper  consideration  of  its  advantages 
and  limitations,  whether  used  in  separately  cast  blocks  or  in  masses 
cast  in  place,  is  a  material  which  holds  out  special  attractions  of  cheap- 
ness, permanence,  and  beauty  to  the  landscape  architect.* 

Where  a  balustrade  is  a  purely  decorative  feature,  where  for  in- 
stance it  crowns  a  building,  the  use  of  copper  in  the  form  of  stone  has 
considerable  excuse :  it  fulfills  its  esthetic  function  as  a  form  well 
enough,  it  is  cheaper,  lighter,  sufficiently  permanent,  and  it  has  no 
economic  use  to  which  its  flimsiness  would  render  it  unsuited.  A  simi- 
lar balustrade  on  a  terrace,  where  people  could  see  it  close  at  hand  and 
touch  it,  would  certainly  be  displeasing  because  its  evident  hoUowness 
and  lightness  would  unfit  it,  or  seem  to  unfit  it,  for  the  practical  pur- 
pose which  it  is  there  to  serve.  The  use  of  wooden  columns,  or  wooden 
balusters,  of  forms  more  properly  applicable  to  stone,  is  less  a  matter 
of  any  attempted  illusion  than  one  of  a  design  relation  which  is  likely 
to  be  unpleasant  between  one  material  and  a  form  typically  associated 
with  another. 

There  are  many  cases  in  which  the  skillful  designer  who  is  intent  Illusions  of 
upon  the  beautiful  appearance  of  his  design  will  construct  shapes  which  ^W^ 
are  surprising  when  accurately  shown  on  plan.f  It  is  often  desirable, 
particularly  in  the  case  of  pools  which  reflect  an  object  beyond  them, 
to  elongate  the  dimension  of  some  unit  of  the  ground  parallel  to  the 
line  of  sight  of  the  observer  in  order  that  this  unit  may  occupy  suffi- 
cient space  in  the  view.     Within  limits  and  under  the  proper  circum- 

*  Cf.  Chapter  X,  p.  205. 

t  See  footnote  reference  to  article  on  Villa  Gamberaia,  p.  117. 


I20 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

stances,  circles  may  be  turned  into  ellipses  in  this  way,  squares  made 
oblongs,  without  the  deviation  from  the  simpler  form  being  apparent. 
Where  a  formal  grove,  a  wall  or  gate,  even  a  building  sta^ids  be- 
tween one  open  area  and  another,  the  best  development  of  the  shapes 
of  the  open  areas  may  produce  a  distorted  shape  of  the  intervening  mass. 
In  the  case  of  the  grove,  this  may  of  course  readily  be  managed.  In 
the  case,  however,  of  so  definite  things  as  buildings  and  even  gateposts, 
many  instances  can  be  found,  particularly  in  Italian  work,  of  excellent 
effects"  produced  by  curiously  distorted  shapes,  which  can  be  known 
to  be  distorted  only  by  measurement,  since  from  no  one  place  can  the 
two  unrelated  sides  be  seen  at  the  same  time.  It  is  extremely  difficult 
to  judge  whether  two  straight  lines  upon  the  ground  are  exactly  parallel, 
if  they  are  nearly  so  and  converging  in  perspective.  It  is,  if  anything, 
still  more  difficult  to  judge  whether  one  line  meets  another  at  right 
angles  on  the  ground,  unless  one  line  is  carried  by  the  junction  point 
so  that  the  eye  may  judge  the  similarity  of  the  two  supplementary 
angles.  It  is  therefore  easy  with  proper  precautions  to  construct  a 
garden  or  other  formal  design  which  shall  appear  to  be  symmetrical 
and  rectangular  while  really  being  neither.  If  a  comparison  of  the 
measurements  which  might  betray  the  deceit  is  skillfully  made  impos- 
sible or  difficult,  the  departure  of  the  total  shape  from  symmetry  may 
be  very  great  without  being  noticed.  In  part  this  is  due  to  the  fact 
that  a  man  is  very  likely  to  take  it  for  granted  that  a  formal  scheme 
is  symmetrical  and  rectangular,  and  only  some  striking  discrepancy  will 
call  a  contrary  fact  to  his  attention.  One  out  of  many  notable  instances 
of  this  is  at  Isola  Bella,  in  the  break  in  the  direction  of  the  axis  of  the 
scheme  on  the  stairway,  which  is  so  arranged  that  no  comparison  of 
the  direction  of  the  two  lines  can  be  made.  The  change  of  direction 
is  about  seventeen  degrees,  but  almost  every  one  assumes  that  the 
whole  scheme  lies  upon  one  axis. 
Illusions  of  It  is  possible  therefore  by  slightly  converging  the  boundary  lines  of 

^^^  a  garden,  perhaps  by  making  paths  somewhat  smaller  at  a  distance 

than  they  are  near  at  hand,  to  give  an  exaggerated  appearance  of 
length  to  a  garden  through  its  apparently  great  diminution  in  perspec- 
tive. A  similar  exaggeration  of  the  effect  of  size  may  be  brought  about 
in  informal  design  by  using  trees  in  the  distance  which,  while  apparently 


LANDSCAPE    COMPOSITION  121 

full  grow^n,  are  really  smaller  than  might  be  expected.  This  effect  of 
size  may  also  be  heightened  by  false  aerial  perspective,  to  which  we  have 
already  referred.*  Of  course  the  application  of  this  sort  of  refinement 
is  limited,  and  could  readily  be  carried  to  an  unprofitable  extreme. 

In  naturalistic  design  it  normally  happens  that  in  any  given  impor-  Illusions  of 
tant  view  the  designer  does  what  he  can  to  enhance  the  character  of  ^^'"'^<^^'' 
the  pond  or  valley  or  other  small  naturalistic  unit  which  forms  the 
principal  part  of  the  particular  scene. f  Sometimes,  by  judicious  screen- 
ing out  of  incongruous  elements  and  careful  concentration  of  attention 
on  those  elements  which  are  of  the  character  intended  to  be  brought 
out,  a  special  character  may  be  given  to  a  scene  as  beheld  from  a  cer- 
tain point  of  view,  although  it  would  be  readilj^  seen  from  other  points 
of  view  that  this  was  not  the  real  character  of  the  region  in  question. 
For  instance,  a  small  stream  of  water,  carried  elsewhere  in  a  ditch  or 
pipe,  might  be  expanded  in  the  middle  distance  of  a  certain  view  to 
resemble  a  shallow,  sluggish  natural  stream.  A  pond  which  for  pur- 
poses of  water  supply  had  its  level  raised  artificially  higher  than  some 
of  the  surrounding  country  might  be  made  to  appear  much  more  natural 
by  so  arranging  the  views  that  the  retaining  banks  were  concealed  by 
foliage,  and  the  pond  itself  was  approached  and  seen  only  from  land 
higher  than  its  own  surface.  The  desirability  of  this  kind  of  effect 
will  depend  on  how  successful  it  is  when  seen  from  the  chosen  viewpoint, 
and  on  whether  the  occasions  are  so  few  as  to  be  negligible  on  which 
it  will  be  seen  from  some  position  which  betrays  its  artificiality. 

The  effects  which  landscapes  have  through  association  may  be  in-  Associational 
creased  by  suggesting  to  the  mind  associations  which  are  interesting  I^l^^^ons 
and  congruous  but  not  properly  belonging  to  the  particular  scene. 
This  was  carried  to  an  absurd  degree  in  the  time  of  the  Romanticists, 
when  false  ruins  were  built,  and  ruined  forts  and  the  tombs  of  imaginary 
heroes  were  placed  in  the  landscape  for  their  sentimental  effect.  In 
naturalistic  design  a  somewhat  similar  although  much  more  desirable 
thing  is  done  where  a  low  hill  is  made  to  appear  much  higher  than  it 
really  is  by  planting  upon  it  dwarfed  trees  and  Alpine  vegetation 
which  the  mind   naturally  associates  with  much  greater  elevations. f 

*  Page  116.  t  Cf.  Chapter  V,  p.  71. 

%  Cf.  Chapter  IX,  p.  166. 


122 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

Here  again  the  line  between  the  deliberate  creation  of  a  false  impres- 
sion and  the  reasonable  enhancement  of  existing  natural  character  is  a 
fine  one,  and  not  always  easy  or  profitable  to  draw. 
Landscape  As  we  have  already  seen,  a  landscape  architect  in  determining  the 

ompositions  esthetic  effects  of  a  composition  considers  first  what  its  pictorial  effect 
will  be  upon  an  observer  from  a  given  position.  Of  course  in  his  actual 
construction  of  his  design  he  is  inevitably  concerned  with  the  location 
of  his  objects  in  three  dimensions,  but  since  it  is  mainly  through  the 
two-dimensional  picture  or  series  of  pictures  which  the  eye  receives 
that  the  actual  objects  may  be  perceived,  it  is  mainly  by  the  beauty 
perceived  and  inferred  through  these  pictures  that  the  esthetic  excel- 
lence of  the  actual  work  will  be  judged.  Where  the  designer  is  creat- 
ing a  definitely  unified  object  like  a  formal  inclosed  garden  or  like  a 
shrub-and-tree-surrounded  lawn,  he  may  trust  the  observer  to  walk 
about  in  it,  to  receive  many  visual  impressions  from  it,  and  at  length 
to  acquire  from  them  all  some  definite  idea  of  the  unity  and  beauty 
of  the  whole.  Even  in  such  a  case,  however,  there  will  be  certain  views 
which  are  particularly  attractive,  particularly  characteristic,  and  the 
designer  will  do  what  he  can  to  impress  these  upon  the  observer  to  the 
comparative  neglect  of  other  views  less  effective.  In  an  informal  or  a 
naturalistic  landscape,  not  having  any  geometrical  total  unity  of  shape 
to  be  understood  by  walking  through  it  and  observing  it,  but  having 
on  the  contrary  a  total  unity  of  character,  or  a  certain  definite  char- 
acteristic sort  of  beauty,  this  character  or  beauty  will  be  perceived 
at  its  best  in  certain  views,  and  will  appear  to  less  advantage  in  others, 
and  it  will  be  necessary  for  the  designer  to  work  out  with  care  the 
two-dimensional  pictorial  aspect  of  his  design  as  seen  from  these  im- 
portant viewpoints  and  to  do  everything  that  he  can  to  lead  the  spec- 
tators to  enjoy  his  work  from  these  viewpoints,  and  to  judge  its  char- 
acter and  its  excellence  by  these  selected  views  seen  in  an  effective 
sequence. 

In  most  of  the  landscape  architect's  designs,  which  consist  of  a 
number  of  separate  units  each  serving  its  own  purpose,  economic  or 
esthetic  —  like  the  various  parts  of  a  country  estate,  for  instance  — 
the  pictorial  compositions  will  be  obtained  in  the  ways  just  mentioned. 
Some  views  will  be  comprised  entirely  within  some  one  portion  of  the 


LANDSCAPE    COMPOSITION i£3 

design,  like  a  view  in  a  forecourt,  in  a  garden,  within  a  lawn ;  other 
views  may  lie  across  several  units  of  this  kind,  and  perhaps  include 
foliage  masses  outside  the  property  and  terminate  on  a  distant  moun- 
tain. The  pictorial  unity  of  these  two  kinds  of  views  is  essentially 
the  same.  The  first  kind,  however,  may  be  represented,  or  at  least 
suggested  for  study,  on  the  plan  of  the  grounds ;  the  second  kind  can 
be  studied,  as  it  can  be  seen,  only  on  the  ground  itself. 

There  is  obviously  no  limit  to  the  variety  of  different  landscape  Typical  Kinds 
compositions.  The  essential  of  a  landscape  composition,  as  we  have  °A  ^^^°^y 
seen,*  is  some  unified  appeal  to  the  attention  throughout  the  objects 
forming  the  composition,  which  makes  them  seem  to  the  observer  to 
form  one  whole  and  thereby  —  to  some  extent  at  least  —  segregates 
that  whole  from  the  rest  of  the  world.  The  arrangements  of  objects  in 
a  view  which  may  produce  this  unified  effect  may  be  thought  of  as  being 
of  three  typically  different  kinds. 

The  compositional  effect  may  be  produced  by  a  single  thing  looked 
at,  like  a  specimen  tree  or  an  isolated  fountain  (see  Tailpiece  on  p.  294), 
or  by  a  unified  group  of  things  looked  at,  for  instance,  a  unified  group 
of  contiguous  trees  on  a  lawn. 

The  compositional  efi"ect  may  be  produced  by  a  number  of  things 
physically  separated,  but  evincing  such  great  unity  in  appearance  or 
related  position  that  attention  falls  rather  upon  this  unifying  relation 
than  upon  the  objects  themselves,  for  instance  a  formal  arrangement 
of  four  cypress  trees  about  a  pool,  or  a  grouping  of  red  cedars  and  gray 
bowlders  in  a  New  England  pasture,  or  a  unified  group  of  mountain 
peaks.     (See  Frontispiece.) 

The  compositional  effect  may  be  produced  by  a  hollow  thing  looked 
into,  such  a  thing  as  a  walled  garden,  a  shrub-bordered  lawn,  or  a  cliff- 
encircled  mountain  tarn.  (See  Plates  6,  8,  and  30,  and  Drawing  I, 
opp.  p.  26.) 

In  the  first  case,  the  single  object  may  attract  the  attention  simply 
because  it  is  so  interesting  in  itself,  and  although  other  objects  are 
physically  present  in  the  view,  their  effect  is  negligible  in  the  com- 
position. Indeed  with  the  single  object  in  the  first  case  or  with  the 
unified  composition  of  objects  discussed  in  the  second  case,  there  may 

*  Page  89. 


124  LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

actually  be  also  inclosing  and  enframing,  foreground  or  background, 
objects,  but  if  they  do  nothing  but  concentrate  the  attention  upon  the 
main  object  or  composition  of  objects,  still  the  whole  composition  re- 
mains in  effect  typically  of  the  first  or  second  kind,  as  the  case  may  be. 
In  the  third  case,  the  hollow  object  looked  into  may,  in  its  turn, 
surround  a  single  object  or  a  composition  of  objects  ;  but  if  these  objects 
merely  diversify  the  open  space  without  attracting  any  particular  con- 
sideration to  themselves,  the  composition  remains  typically  of  the 
third  kind. 

In  actual  practice  it  is  seldom  that  a  given  view  is  a  pure  example 
of  any  one  of  these  types,  —  indeed  a  view  may  impress  the  observer 
as  one  or  another  according  as  his  attention  happens  to  fall. 

The  pictorial  landscape  compositions  which  we  have  been  discuss- 
ing are  often  very  definite  and  very  powerful  in  their  esthetic  effect, 
but,  as  we  have  seen,  the  effect  of  the  same  scene  may  be  greatly  dif- 
ferent upon  different  observers,  and  essentially  the  same  compositional 
effect  may  be  produced  by  very  different  scenes.  It  comes  about  from 
this  that  we  have  practically  no  specific  names  denoting  arrangements 
of  objects  by  their  compositional  effect,*  indeed  in  all  the  literature  of 
landscape  design  we  have  really  only  one  word  of  this  kind,  namely, 
the  word  vista.  It  is  not  surprising  that  the  vista  should  be  thus  dif- 
ferentiated, for  it  is  perhaps  of  all  landscape  compositions  the  most 
unified.  For  this  reason  we  may  discuss  it  here  as  a  typical  example 
of  a  pictorial  composition. 
The  Vista  as  a  The  unity  of  the  vista  consists  in  the  dominance  of  the  focal  point, 
Typical  and  this  point  is  made  important  in  almost  every  possible  way.     It  is 

Example  enframed  pictorially  by  the  balanced  subordinate  masses  which  inclose 

the  vista,  and  these  masses  screen  all  other  objects  out  from  the  com- 
position. The  bounding  lines  of  these  enframing  masses  converge  upon 
the  focal  point,  and  a  sequence  of  attention  follows  their  vanishing 
straight  lines  or  their  masses  diminishing  in  perspective  toward  the 
focal  point.  In  association,  the  open  space  of  the  vista  allows  —  or 
at  least  suggests  —  that  the  spectator  go  toward  the  focal  point  as  an 

*  Cf.  Hirschfeld's  remarks  on  the  difficulty  of  finding  names  for  different  parts 
of  the  landscape,  in  his  Theorie  de  I'Art  des  Jardins,  1779,  v.  i,  p.  215-216.  (See 
References.) 


LANDSCAPE    COMPOSITION 125 

important  object  worthy  of  closer  inspection.  The  formal  allee  gives 
all  these  effects  more  definitely,  more  obviously  (see  again  Drawing  I, 
opp.  p.  26),  but  a  vista  between  natural  tree  masses  or  ground  forms 
may  produce  the  same  essential  effect.     (See  Plate  21.) 

The  focal  point,  which  is  treated  as  being  so  essentially  dominant, 
must  be  worthy  of  this  dominance.  (See  Drawing  IX,  opp.  p.  78,  and 
Drawing  XV,  opp.  p.  122.)  Exceptionally,  this  "point"  may  be  merely 
an  opening,  the  bright  spot  where  a  shaded  allee  stops  on  the  brink  of 
a  declivity  commanding  a  view,  or  where  a  wood-road  comes  out  into 
a  sunlit  pasture.  Such  an  arrangement,  however,  is  seldom  thoroughly 
satisfactory-.  Alerely  a  vacuity  is  not  likely  to  seem  a  sufficient  ter- 
mination. Where  such  a  composition  occurs,  it  is  often  desirable  to 
introduce  some  object  —  for  instance,  a  shelter  —  which  serves  as  a 
sufficient  terminus  for  the  vista  and  from  which  the  open  view  may 
be  enjoyed.  If  an  object  closes  a  vista,  usually,  as  we  have  said,  it  is 
desirable  that  this  object  shall  be  worthy  of  inspection  at  close  range, 
as  well  as  being  in  its  main  mass  sufficient  for  its  effect  in  the  vista. 
A  statue,  a  niche,  a  fountain,  a  shelter,  is  likely  to  be  a  successful  feature 
in  such  a  composition,  —  a  shelter  perhaps  particularly  so,  because  it 
suggests  the  desirability  of  going  to  it.  A  great  tree  in  a  distant 
landscape  may  serve,  as  a  mountain  does,*  as  a  sufficient  focal 
point,  although  one  has  no  great  desire  to  go  to  it ;  but  in  a  smaller 
composition  a  tree  is  likely  to  be  a  poor  focal  point,  because,  however 
well  its  mass  may  serve  at  a  distance,  it  can  hardly  offer  interest 
enough  in  the  details  of  its  trunk  near  at  hand  to  repay  a  close  ap- 
proach. A  better  arrangement  will  usually  be  to  use  as  a  focal  point 
a  shelter,  or  arch,  or  seat,  according  to  the  scale  and  conditions  of 
the  case,  grouped  with  the  tree  and  overarched,  shaded,  and  dignified 
by  it. 

Where  the  focal  point  is  distant  and  perhaps  seen  across  a  consider- 
able interv'ening  open  space  from  the  end  of  the  vista,  as  for  instance 
where  a  distant  hill  is  thus  looked  at,  it  may  be  given  greater  apparent 
importance  by  a  contraction  of  the  vista  which  cuts  out  nearly  all  other 
objects  except  the  hill,  converges  the  attention  more  directly  on  the 
hill,  and  thereby  gives  it  greater  relative  dominance.! 

*  Cf.  footnote,  p.  103.  fSee  Drawing  XVI,  on  next  page. 


Pictorial 
Enframement, 
Foregrounds, 
Backgrounds, 
and   Planes 
of  Distance 


126 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


If  a  landscape  composition  is  to  tell  as  one  unified  thing  it  must  be 
segregated  from  the  things  on  each  side  of  it.  As  we  have  seen,  this 
may  be  done  by  its  standing  alone  or  being  so  important  that  the  other 
things  are  not  noticed ;  but  in  the  actual  practice  of  the  landscape 
architect  this  segregation  is  almost  always  accomplished  by  the  creation 
of  some  kind  of  frame,  which  not  only  prevents  the  visual  intrusion  of 


REl/riON  OF  ENFRAMEMENT  AND  VI5TA-P0INT.A. 


RELATIO;^JOFi:NrRAMEMENTANDV;5TA-P07NTB. 


^Vh 


DRAWING  XVI 


undesirable  objects,  but  sets  definite  limits  to  the  composition  which 
is  being  considered,  fixes  its  center,  and  so  gives  value  to  the  composi- 
tional space-relations  of  the  objects  within  it.  Enframement  on  the 
sides  of  a  landscape  composition  is  the  most  important,*  and  many 
scenes  are  satisfactory  when  only  so  much  enframed.  (See  Plate  14.) 
Overhanging  trees  may  enframe  a  composition  on  the  top  as  well  (see 
Drawing  II,  opp.  p.  30),  and  the  shadows  of  such  trees,  or  a  long  shadow 
from  an  object  at  the  side,  or  perhaps  a  low  mass  of  shrubbery  over 

*  Cf.  p.  96-97,  Balance. 


LANDSCAPE    COMPOSITION 127 

which  the  observer  looks,  will  similarly  enframe  the  view  at  the  bottom. 
(See  Plates  21  and  28.)  Such  complete  enframement  will  still  further  con- 
centrate the  attention  on  the  main  portion  of  the  composition.  Gener- 
ally these  enframing  objects,  which  from  their  nature  should  not  attract 
attention  to  themselves,  will  be  dark  in  color  or  lie  in  shadow,  while 
the  portion  of  the  composition  to  be  treated  like  an  enframed  picture 
will  He  in  light.  (See  Drawing  XV,  opp.  p.  122,  and  Tailpiece  on  p.  61.) 
Again,  the  important  part  of  the  composition  may  be  further  inclosed 
and  in  another  sense  enframed  by  being  relieved  against  some  sub- 
ordinated background,  and  by  being  shown  in  proper  scale  and  relative 
distance  by  being  seen  over  an  appropriate  foreground.  (See  again  Plate 
28,  and  also  Plate  4.)  Although  the  effect  of  a  landscape  composition 
can  never  be  independent  of  its  appearance  considered  as  a  picture  in 
two  dimensions  only,  it  can  never  be  entirely  successful  unless  it  is  seen 
to  be  organized  also  in  its  third  dimension,  —  its  extent  away  from  the 
observer.  In  order  that  the  value  of  its  three-dimensional  forms  may  be 
properly  perceived,  it  is  desirable  to  make  the  relative  distances  of  the 
objects  away  from  the  observer  as  evident  as  possible.  We  have 
already  seen  how  the  relative  sizes  of  objects  in  perspective,  their  rela- 
tive colors  in  aerial  perspective,  help  in  this  perception.  Simplifica- 
tion of  the  view  into  onh-  a  few  planes  of  distance,  and  differentiation 
of  these  planes  in  color,  in  form,  in  light  and  shade,  will  also  make  the 
actual  form  of  the  whole  composition  more  easily  grasped  and  so  ap- 
parently more  unified.  (See  Plate  23.)  It  is  evident  that  if  the  main 
feature  in  the  composition  needs  to  be  made  as  important  as  possible, 
care  must  be  taken  that  neither  foreground  nor  background  are  inter- 
esting enough  of  themselves  to  obtrude  upon  the  attention.  If  there  is 
danger  that  the  important  part  of  the  composition  will  appear  somewhat 
too  small  to  produce  the  desired  effect,  its  apparent  size  in  the  compo- 
sition may  be  increased  by  bringing  the  spectator  nearer  to  it.  If  there 
is  danger  of  the  main  object  appearing  to  be  too  near  to  the  spectator, 
within  narrow  limits  the  difficulty  may  be  diminished  by  increasing  the 
scale  and  coarseness  of  textureof  the  foreground,  and  by  bringing  the  fore- 
ground as  near  as  may  be  to  the  spectator,  so  that  the  apparent  distance 
between  it  and  the  main  object  may  be  as  great  as  possible.  In  a  land- 
scape composition  the  observer  can   concentrate  his   attention  upon 


128 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Objects  in 
Landscape 
Composition 
According  to 
their  Design 
Value 


any  chosen  object  almost  to  the  exclusion  of  objects  nearer  and  farther 
away.  It  is  impossible  for  the  eye  to  see  clearly  at  the  same  instant 
objects  which  are  at  widely  different  distances.  If,  therefore,  the  at- 
tention is  called  to  an  object,  the  eye  focuses  upon  it,  and  objects  at 
other  distances  are  consequently  thrown  out  of  focus  and  make  less 
appeal  to  attention.  This  fact  makes  it  possible  in  landscape  com- 
position to  use  as  a  dominant  object  something  subtending  a  very  small 
proportion  of  the  visual  angle.  For  instance,  a  very  distant  mountain 
of  marked  form  but  not  notable  size  may  serve  in  a  landscape  view  as  a 
perfectly  satisfactory  climax,  but  in  no  ordinary  photograph  of  that 
view  will  it  appear  other  than  insignificant. 

It  is  to  be  noticed  that  while  the  painter  has  a  definite  and  dis- 
tinct frame  surrounding  his  picture,  in  a  landscape  composition  it  is 
more  or  less  a  matter  of  arbitrary  definition  whether  a  certain  object 
shall  be  considered  as  a  portion  of  the  frame  or  as  a  subordinate  mass 
in  the  composition  (see  Drawing  II,  opp.  p.  30)  ;  and  furthermore,  as 
we  have  seen,  an  object  which  helps  to  enframe  one  composition  may 
play  a  dominant  part  in  another. 

Whether  a  landscape  composition  be  formal  or  not  formal,  the  de- 
signer will  be  concerned  with  arranging  it  so  that  the  attention  may 
be  held  at  one  point  or  led  from  point  to  point  in  an  ordered  manner. 
He  will  introduce  and  arrange  objects  in  his  composition  on  account  of 
the  specific  functions  which  they  can  serve  in  this  way.  Some  objects, 
for  instance,  serve  best  to  segregate  one  open  area  from  another,  like 
simple  informal  planting  masses  or  formal  walls  and  fences  (see  Plate 
33  and  Drawing  XIV,  opp.  p.  112) ;  some  objects  serve  to  decorate  the 
surface  of  the  ground,  like  fields  of  grain  or  fallen  leaves  or  formal 
carpet-bedding  and  paths  and  pools  (see  Plates  29  and  30) ;  some  objects 
serve  to  call  attention  directly  to  themselves  and  thus  play  a  dominant 
part  in  the  whole  design,  or,  according  to  their  scale,  in  some  subordinate 
part  of  it.  (See  again  Plates  29  and  30,  and  also  Drawing  XX,  opp.  p. 
158.)  Such  an  object  might  be  a  mountain,  a  great  oak  tree,  a  flowering 
shrub,  or  a  house,  a  pavilion,  a  hooded  seat,  or  a  sundial.  While  the 
essential  esthetic  functions  of  well-composed  objects  are  definite  in 
any  scene,  whether  it  be  formal  or  informal,  still  they  are  more  easily 
understood  and  explained  when  they  manifest  themselves  in  formal 


LANDSCAPE    COMPOSITION  129 

design ;  and  as  in  a  formal  garden  all  the  more  important  functions  of 
objects  in  composition  in  some  way  appear,  we  shall  continue  the  dis- 
cussion of  these  relations  using  the  garden  as  an  example  in  the  section 
on  the  garden  in  Chapter  XI.* 

We  have  been  considering  the  various  objects  in  landscape  com-  Temporary 
position  which  we  have  discussed,  as  being  for  the  purposes  of  our  de-  Elements 
sign  permanent  in  location  and  changing  in  form  no  faster  than  does, 
for  instance,  a  growing  plant.  It  is  often  desirable,  however,  to  count 
as  a  part  of  our  compositions  men  and  animals  moving  about  and 
having  no  definite  location  in  the  design.  (See  Plate  10,  and  Draw- 
ing XI,  opp.  p.  82.)  It  is  evident  that  an  object  whose  location  is 
unpredictable  can  hardly  be  relied  upon  as  a  dominant  object  in 
a  composition.  Usually  the  designer  expects  rather  to  get  a  certain 
vivacity  and  variety  from  this  element,  a  certain  diversification  of 
surfaces  which  otherwise  might  be  too  bare  and  simple,  whether  he  is 
dealing  with  the  ducks  in  a  pond,  the  sheep  in  a  pasture,  or  the  crowds 
of  courtiers  on  the  great  terrace  at  Versailles.  Every  landscape  shares 
to  some  extent  in  the  changing  beauty  of  the  sky  and  the  moving 
clouds.  (See  Frontispiece  and  Plates  li  and  22.)  In  an  inclosed 
garden  this  may  be  but  an  incident ;  in  an  open  and  distant  view  into 
the  west,  it  may  be  the  frequent  presence  of  clouds  more  than  anything 
else  that  makes  the  view  a  desirable  one.  Although  man  cannot  pre- 
dict the  exact  beauty  which  the  skies  may  at  any  time  offer  to  him,  he 
may  nevertheless  so  arrange  his  design  that  he  may  take  advantage  of 
whatever  beauties  may  come,  and  that  his  own  work  may  appear  to 
advantage  whether  in  sunshine  against  a  darkened  distance  or  sil- 
houetted in  cloud  shadow  against  a  brilliant  background. 

*  Pages  233-246. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


The  Value  in 
Design  of  a 
Knowledge  of 
Natural 
Forms 


NATURAL  FORMS   OF   GROUND,  ROCK,  AND   WATER 
AS   ELEMENTS    IN   DESIGN 

The  value  in  design  of  a  knowledge  of  natural  forms  —  Hills  and  moun- 
tains :  typical  forms  —  Hill  and  mountain  forms  in  landscape  composition  — 
Modification  of  effect  of  hill  by  treatment  of  local  details  —  Valleys  :  typical 
forms  —  Choice  of  viewpoint  for  completeness  of  effect  of  valley  —  Plains  : 
typical  forms  and  effects  —  Bodies  of  water  :  their  effects  —  Lakes  —  Islands 
—  Shores  and  beaches  —  Streams  and  stream  banks  —  Waterfalls  —  Rocks  in 
naturalistic  design  —  Bowlders  —  Ledges  —  Color  and  texture  of  rocks  —  Rock 
planting  —  Minor  modeling  of  ground  surface  —  Banks. 

The  natural  forms  of  ground,  rock,  and  water  have  individuality 
and  value  as  elements  in  landscape  composition  in  the  degree  that  they 
have  striking  shape  or  color  or  texture,  recognizable  natural  character, 
or  appreciable  emotional  effect.  The  smaller  natural  forms,  —  such 
things  as  brook  valleys,  undulations  of  ground  surface,  small  ponds, 
—  the  landscape  designer  may  sometimes  control.  He  may  preserve 
them,  and  incorporate  them  into  his  own  work,  or  he  may  imitate  them 
in  totally  new  construction.  The  larger  natural  forms  —  mountains 
and  prairies  and  great  river  valleys,  the  ocean,  large  lakes,  and  the 
greater  features  of  their  shores  —  are  landscape  elements  quite  be- 
yond the  power  of  the  designer  to  change  in  any  essential  way.  He 
may,  however,  choose  and  develop  certain  points  of  view  from  which 
the  natural  landscape  forms  fall  into  good  pictorial  compositions,  and 
he  may  arrange  the  foreground  over  which  he  has  control  in  such  a 
way  as  to  enframe  a  good  composition  and  to  conceal  incongruous 
elements.  Also  —  and  this  should  be  the  first  duty  and  the  greatest 
pleasure  of  a  student  of  naturalistic  design  —  he  may  study  the  great 
natural  forms,  become  familiar  with  their  character,  get  inspiration 

130 


GROUND,     ROCK,     IVATER 131 

from  their  effect,  and  in  the  light  of  his  appreciation  convey  some 
part  of  his  inspiration  to  the  beholder  of  his  own  small  work. 

In  whatever  one  of  these  ways  he  deals  with  natural  landscape,  knowl- 
edge of  the  natural  forms  is  a  prerequisite  to  good  design.  This  knowl- 
edge can  be  obtained  only  by  patient  study  of  the  forms  themselves. 
This  chapter  can  do  no  more  than  consider  a  few  examples  from  a 
great  number  of  forms,  and  discuss  a  few  of  the  simpler  considerations 
out  of  vast  possibilities  of  appreciation  and  inspiration. 

In  ground  forms  large  and  small,  the  landscape  architect  finds  the 
three  simple  fundamental  form  unities,  the  convex,  the  concave,  and 
the  plane.  He  studies  hills  and  mountains,  or  valleys,  or  plains,  and 
again  he  makes  in  his  own  work  similar  forms  and  relations  of  forms, 
of  a  size  possible  of  production  within  his  limited  powers. 

From  the  multitude  of  shapes  of  hills  and  mountains,  the  designer  Hills  and 
might  differentiate  for  purposes  of  discussion  three  classes  according  ■if°"."'^"i,'*^'' 
to  the  way  m  which  the  attention  tails  on  their  modeling  and  on  their 
outline.  There  are  hills  which  are  crouching  and  comfortable,  round- 
topped,  gentle-sloped,  merging  by  imperceptible  degrees  into  the  sur- 
rounding ground  surface.  (See  Plate  22.)  The  attention  which 
follows  their  surfaces  or  their  silhouettes  against  the  distant  sky  may 
run  as  readily  away  from  their  top  as  towards  it,  and  is  definitely  ar- 
rested nowhere  along  the  line.  Such  hills  are  individual  because  they 
lift  themselves  as  considerable  masses  above  the  neighboring  landscape, 
but  their  surface  is  sequential  with  the  surrounding  forms.  As  their 
height  becomes  less  and  their  slopes  less  steep,  they  lose  their  indi- 
viduality, and  become  at  length  merely  undulations  of  a  general  sur- 
face. Such  hills  may  be  the  results  of  many  different  geologic  causes, 
but  they  are  often  produced  by  long-continued  erosion  or  deposition  of 
soft  materials.  They  may  perhaps  be  left  standing,  first  current-cut 
and  then  rain-worn,  above  the  flat-bottomed  valleys  of  the  lower  reaches 
of  a  river,  being  the  remnants  of  a  former  plain,  all  the  rest  of  which 
has  been  carried  away  by  the  stream  ;  or  they  may  be  moraines  or  drum- 
lins,  masses  of  debris  carried  and  at  last  deposited  by  the  ice  or  by  the 
under-ice  water  of  a  glacier. 

There  are  mountains  which  are  aspiring  and  individual,  having  a 
definite  summit  in  which  the  lines  of  the  slopes  culminate  and  on  which 


132 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Hill  and 

Mountain 
Forms  in 
Landscape 
Composition 


the  attention  perforce  rests.  The  lower  portions  of  the  slopes  of  such 
mountains  need  not  be  steep,  and  may  indeed  run  smoothly  into  the 
surrounding  ground  forms ;  in  fact  the  peak  or  crest  of  the  mountain 
need  form  only  a  very  small  portion  of  its  total  bulk,  but  it  attracts  the 
attention  and  gives  character  and  individuality  to  the  whole  eminence 
by  concentrating  in  one  dominating  spire  the  upward  sweep  of  the  whole 
mountain  mass.  Such  mountains,  or  at  least  their  summits,  must  be 
made  of  hard  material,  and  usually  are  the  result  of  upheaval  and  of 
the  disintegrating  effects  of  frost  and  the  erosion  of  water,  their  end- 
lessly different  shapes  being  the  results  of  the  cleavage  or  stability  of 
the  different  rocks  under  the  action  of  the  destructive  forces.  This 
is,  in  most  men's  minds,  the  typical  mountain  form.  Whether  the 
beholder  regards  it  as  inspiring  and  sublime,  or  repellent  and  wild,  will 
depend  in  part  on  the  form  of  the  mountain,  no  doubt  upon  its  crags 
and  its  cap  of  snow,  but  more  the  effect  will  depend  on  the  observer 
himself.  A  mountain  range  which  seems  inhospitable  to  the  farmer, 
and  savage  to  the  city  dweller,  may  be  a  glorious  challenge  to  the 
mountaineer.     (See  Frontispiece.) 

There  are  hills  which  rise  abruptly  from  the  surrounding  landscape 
and  bear  on  their  tops  a  more  or  less  level  area,  segregated  by  the 
steepness  of  the  slopes  from  the  lands  below  it.  Such  a  butte  or  mesa 
"attracts  the  attention  as  a  separated  mass  in  the  general  composition; 
there  is  no  sequence  of  line  either  over  or  into  the  outline  of  the  hill 
from  the  surrounding  landscape.  The  upper  plateau  is  segregated 
both  actually  and  esthetically  by  the  barrier  sides.  As  an  object  in 
composition,  such  a  hill  is  likely  to  be  very  individual,  and  to  relate  to 
other  objects  only  by  its  total  mass  or  color.  Such  hills  may  be  the 
result  of  the  water  erosion  of  a  previous  plain  made  of  a  material  which 
has  a  very  high  angle  of  repose,  usually  of  a  horizontally  stratified 
material  with  a  hard  crowning  layer,  or  they  may  be,  exceptionally, 
the  results  of  uplifting  or  subsidence  along  a  fault  plane. 

A  single  mountain  may  be  looked  at  for  its  own  beauty,  just  as  a 
statue  may  be,  but  a  distant  view  of  a  mountain  inevitably  includes 
other  elements  besides  the  mountain  itself,  and  if  the  mountain  is  to 
be  most  effective  in  the  larger  view  in  which  it  forms  only  a  part,  it 
must  be  compositionally  related  to  the  other  objects  in  the  view :    it 


GROUND,    ROCK,    WATER 133 

must  be  led  up  to  by  converging  lines,  or  supported  by  subordinate 
masses,  or  given  scale  by  a  proper  foreground,  or  enframed  by  nearer 
hills  or  still  nearer  trees.  Here  the  landscape  architect,  even  with 
the  small  means  at  his  disposal,  may  produce  considerable  results  by 
so  choosing  the  viewpoint  and  so  disposing  the  foreground  that  the 
form,  the  character,  the  effect  of  the  mountain  tell  to  greatest  advan- 
tage in  the  view  offered  to  the  observer. 

The  working  of  natural  forces  in  any  particular  locality  will  tend 
to  impose  similar  forms  on  similar  materials.  The  compositional 
appearance  of  hills  or  mountains  and  their  intervening  valleys  may  be 
unified  by  the  repeated  parallelism  of  lines  of  strata,  by  the  repeated 
steplike  outlines  which  these  strata  cause  in  erosion.  The  constant 
angle  of  repose  of  a  certain  eroded  material  may  cause  a  frequent 
repetition  of  a  certain  line  of  slope,  a  parallelism  of  hillside  with  hill- 
side throughout  the  composition,  or  a  balance  of  hillside  against  hill- 
side on  opposite  sides  of  the  eroding  stream.  The  work  of  a  glacier 
which  has  ground  down  one  side  of  each  hill  in  a  series  and  left  the 
opposite  side  steep  and  craggy  may  produce  a  repetition  of  unbalanced 
forms,  a  sequence,  a  tendency  in  one  direction,  which  may  be  a  very 
strong  governing  condition  in  the  composition.  The  completeness  of 
the  pictorial  composition  of  a  number  of  hills  and  mountains  as  included 
in  any  one  view  is  largely  a  matter  of  accident ;  but  in  some  cases  the 
unity  of  form  caused  by  natural  forces  in  these  mentioned  and  other 
ways  is  so  great  that  exceptionally  it  may  be  possible  to  choose  a  point 
of  view  commanding  a  landscape  unified  not  only  in  its  consistent 
character  and  in  its  effect,  but  also  in  its  composition  in  form  and  color 
and  texture,  in  repetition,  sequence,  and  balance,  as  completely  as 
though  it  had  been  constructed  by  some  intelligence  which  had  intended 
primarily  this  result.*     (See  again  the  Frontispiece.) 

Man  can  seldom  modify  the  shape  of  a  hill,  seen  as  a  whole  in  the  Modification 

landscape  composition,  but  he  may  sometimes  modify  its  effect  on  °L^P"^^^ 

r  r  •  T-.         nill  bv  Ireat- 

closer  approach  by  a  consistent  treatment  of  some  of  its  parts.     Par-  ment  of  Local 

Details 
*  Cf.  Hugo  Marcus,  Die  Ornameniale  Schonheit  der  Landschaft  und  der  Natur. 

Note  especially  his  remarks  on  composition  illustrated  in  nature  by  mountain  ranges 
at  the  beginning  of  the  chapter,  Natiirliche  Versammlungsschonheit  in  der  Land- 
schaft .  .  .  ,  and  the  figures  at  the  back  of  the  book.     (See  References.) 


134 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


ticularly  with  the  smaller  hills  which  are  easily  accessible  to  man, 
much  may  be  done  by  a  skillful  designer  to  unify  and  intensify  their 
desired  effect  upon  the  visitor  by  such  means  as  the  treatment  of  their 
summits,  and  by  proper  laying  out  of  paths  upon  their  sides.  Let  us 
suppose,  for  instance,  that  there  is  a  subordinate  hill  near  a  New  Eng- 
land mountain  hotel,  and  that  it  is  desirable  to  make  the  hill  itself  as 
important  as  possible,  assuming  as  far  as  may  be  the  effect  of  a  moun- 
tain to  the  mind  of  the  visitor.  It  would  probably  be  best  so  to  ar- 
range the  path  to  the  summit  that  it  concentrates  most  of  the  climbing 
in  a  steep  ascent,  preferably  near  the  top,  or  perhaps,  without  making 
the  path  itself  very  steep,  to  run  it  along  the  steepest  slope  available. 
The  viewpoint  near  the  top  might  well  be  a  craggy  place,  with  a  steep 
declivity  below  the  spectator,  and  if  the  trees  are  all  spruce,  and  stunted 
by  poor  soil,  so  much  the  better  for  the  eflFect  of  height  and  wildness. 
If  there  be  a  shelter  at  the  viewpoint  it  might  be  built  of  heavy  rough 
stone  or  logs,  and  crouched  against  a  bowlder  as  though  to  be  shel- 
tered from  a  great  wind.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  it  were  desirable  to 
make  the  hill  seem  as  restful  as  possible,  the  path  might  avoid  steep 
places,  but  seek  incidents  of  openings  and  subordinate  views,  with 
frequent  seats  and  all  possible  excuses  for  pausing  by  the  way,  and 
the  summit  might  be  gently  rounding,  perhaps  with  a  sunny  opening 
protected  by  surrounding  round-headed  trees  and  with  a  light  shelter 
suggesting  the  comfort  of  the  hotel. 
Valleys:  Unlike  a  mountain,  a  valley  very  generally  forms  of  itself  a  com- 

Typical  Forms  pig-j-g  composition,  when  seen,  as  it  usually  is  seen,  from  within.  The 
observer's  view  is  bounded  by  the  sides  which  enframe  the  bottom, 
where  usually  the  greatest  interest  lies  both  on  account  of  the  con- 
verging slopes  of  the  sides  and  on  account  of  the  frequent  presence  of 
a  stream.  Some  valleys  are  placid,  restful,  with  gently-sloping  sides 
meeting  at  the  bottom  in  an  easy  curve,  so  that  the  interest  follows 
this  sequential  surface  as  readily  up  and  out  to  where  the  edge  of  the 
valley  shows  against  the  sky  as  downward  to  the  lowest  point.  (See 
again  Plate  22.)  Such  valleys  are  commonly  created  by  the  slow  ero- 
sion of  soft  material,  which,  washing  down  from  the  upper  parts  of  the 
slopes,  leaves  these  merging  by  gradual  convexities  into  the  surround- 
ing uplands,  and,  being  deposited  at  the  bottom  of  the  slopes,  con- 


GROUND,    ROCK,     IVATER  135 

nects  them  by  a  smooth  concavity  with  the  floor  of  the  valley  or  with 
the  opposite  side. 

Some  valleys  are  formed  by  steep  slopes,  perhaps  leaving  the  up- 
land at  a  sharp  angle,  though  they  may  be  continuations  of  a  moun- 
tain slope  above,  and  meeting  below  at  a  sharp  angle,  where  lies  the 
stream  which  is  still  obviously  at  work  in  deepening  its  channel  and 
causing  more  material  from  the  side  slopes  to  fall  into  its  bed.  In 
such  valleys  the  attention  of  the  observer  is  brought  sharply  to  the 
convergence  of  the  slopes  at  the  bottom.  (See  Plate  23.)  These 
valleys  are  almost  certainly  more  striking  in  their  eflFect  than  are  the 
gently-sloped  valleys,  and  in  those  cases  where  the  eroded  material  is 
hard  they  may  become  steep-sided  gorges  of  almost  any  degree  of  se- 
clusion and  romantic  wildness  and  gloom. 

Other  valleys  have  nearly  vertical  sides  terminating  sharply  against 
a  flat  floor  below,  which  thus  is  made  to  form  almost  a  world  in  itself. 
Such  a  valley  gives  to  the  full  a  sense  of  seclusion,  but  may  have,  unlike 
the  narrow  gorge,  an  effect  of  sufficient  openness  and  light  and  peace. 
Such  valleys  are  also  commonly  the  result  of  stream-erosion  in  a  ma- 
terial such  that  their  sides  may  stand  very  steep,  and  usually  the  flat 
floor  of  the  bottom  is  made  by  deposition  of  material  by  the  valley 
stream. 

In  arranging  paths  in  a  valley,  to  display  its  character  to  the  best  Choice  of 

advantage,  the  depth  of  the  valley  should  be  made  to  tell  at  its  full  ^i^^poimfor 
°   '  ^  n        n  1  -J         Completeness  o 

value.     A  U-shaped  valley,  or  one  with  a  flat  floor  and  very  steep  sides,  Effect  of 

may  be  well  seen  from  the  bottom  if  this  is  not  choked  with  trees,  for  f alley 
the  view  includes  at  once  the  whole  depth  from  the  floor  to  the  upper 
rim.  A  V-shaped  valley,  however,  particularly  when  the  immediate 
banks  of  the  stream  are  steeper  than  the  average  side  slope  of  the 
valley,  as  is  frequently  the  case,  is  often  not  seen  to  good  advantage 
from  the  bottom,  as  the  intermediate  parts  of  the  slope  prevent  a  full 
view  of  the  inclosing  sides.  In  such  cases,  and  often  in  other  valleys, 
the  best  view  is  obtained  by  looking  along  the  valley  from  some  pro- 
jecting buttress,  considerably  above  the  bottom,  commanding  the  whole 
sweep  of  the  sides  and  getting  an  additional  effect  of  depth  by  a  de- 
scent, perhaps  steep,  froiji  the  viewpoint  to  the  bottom  of  the  valley. 
If  considerable  exertion  is  necessary  in  climbing  up  or  down  to  the 


136 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Plains : 
Typical  Forms 
and  Effects 


Bodies  of 
Water,  and 
their  Effects 


viewpoint,  so  much  the  more  will  be  the  effect  of  the  depth  of  the 
valley. 

Plains  are  usually  the  result  geologically  of  the  deposition  of  fine 
material  by  water.  Sometimes  the  material  has  been  deposited  by 
the  slackening  current  of  a  stream,  but  often  it  has  been  laid  down  on 
the  bottom  of  a  former  sea  or  lake.  The  minor  variations  of  the  sur- 
face are  partly  the  natural  results  of  variations  in  the  depositing  cur- 
rents of  water  and  in  the  character  of  the  material  deposited,  but  usually 
they  are  rather  the  result  of  subsequent  erosion.  Plains  are  almost 
never  perfectly  level,  but  without  losing  their  essential  flatness,  it  is 
quite  possible  for  them  to  have  noticeable  minor  undulations  which, 
under  various  effects  of  light  and  shade,  may  break  the  main  surface 
pictorially  into  sharply  segregated  units  of  endless  variety. 

If  a  plain  be  small  enough  so  that  its  boundary  of  hills  or  foliage  is 
visible  as  a  surrounding  wall,  the  form  of  the  plain  will  depend  largely 
on  the  outlines  given  it  by  this  boundary.  If  our  attention  rests  upon 
this  form,  we  may  think  of  the  composition  before  us  as  an  enframed 
area  of  a  certain  shape ;  but  our  attention  may  pass  entirely  over  the 
plain,  and  we  may  think  of  the  composition  as  a  wall  of  foliage  or  hills 
seen  across  a  level  foreground.  The  dominance  of  the  plain  or  of  its 
enframement  in  a  given  composition  will  naturally  depend  on  the 
relative  amount  of  attention  attracted  by  the  form  and  character  of 
the  enframement  and  by  the  character  of  the  plain  in  its  texture  of 
grass  and  flowers,  its  subordinate  play  of  surface,  and  its  recognizable 
form  inside  of  its  boundaries.  Some  plains  are  so  large  that  their  actual 
limits  may  be  beyond  the  distant  horizon.  The  first  effect  of  such  a 
plain  upon  the  observer  is  that  of  vastness  like  the  effect  of  the  open 
sea,  —  of  infinity  like  that  of  the  star-lit  sky,  —  an  effect  which  is  pro- 
duced in  its  completeness  by  no  other  forms  in  nature.* 

Just  as  with  plains,  as  we  have  said,  so  with  the  sea  and  with  great 
lakes,  the  effect  on  the  observer  is  less  that  of  form  than  of  infinity. 
Bodies  of  water  with  visible  boundaries,  however,  like  plains  so  bounded, 
will  depend,  for  the  attention  which  they  attract  to  their  surface,  upon 
the  total  form  of  this  surface  given  by  their  boundaries  and  upon  the 
variety  and  interest  of  the  surface  itself. 

*  Cf.  Chapter  V,  p.  64. 


GROUND,     ROCK,     WATER ijj_ 

More  than  any  other  element  in  a  landscape  composition,  a  lake  or 
pond  surface  is  a  unified  thing.  It  is  all  of  the  same  material,  sharply 
contrasted  with  its  surroundings,  it  lies  all  at  the  same  level,  and  it 
has  from  its  motion,  the  sound  of  its  waves,  its  constant  play  and 
change  under  the  influence  of  wind  and  current,  a  life  and  character 
which  is  almost  a  personality.  In  its  responsiveness  to  the  forces  of 
wind  and  storm,  in  the  suddenness  with  which  it  may  pass  from  calm 
to  gayety,  from  gayety  to  gloom  or  fur}',  its  range  in  emotional  effect  is 
so  great  as  to  make  it,  in  this  respect,  a  thing  apart  from  the  other 
elements  of  landscape  except  perhaps  the  sky. 

When  a  water  surface  is  calm,  it  is  diversified  by  the  reflections  of 
its  opposite  shore,  of  the  dark  hollows  under  an  overhanging  tree  or  at 
the  foot  of  a  great  rock,  of  the  lacework  of  a  winter  tree  against  the 
sunset  sky,  all  somewhat  refined,  etherealized,  and  harmonized  by  par- 
taking of  the  tone  of  the  water  mirror.  (See  Plates  26  and  32,  and 
compare  Drawing  XXV,  opp.  p.  196,  and  Plate  I.)  When  the  surface 
is  ruffled  by  the  breeze  the  reflections  lose  the  beauty  of  exquisite  de- 
tail to  take  on  the  beauty  of  impressionistic  color,  into  which  the 
brilliant  reflection  of  the  sky,  repeated  by  the  ripples  in  lines  and 
patches,  is  inter\voven  at  the  will  of  the  wind  with  the  darkness  of  the 
reflection  of  the  shore.  This  power  of  reflection  gives  any  water  sur- 
face a  strong  appeal  to  the  interest  of  the  observer,  and  the  smaller 
natural  water  surfaces,  —  ponds,  lakes,  and  rivers,  —  lying  as  they  must 
where  the  natural  slopes  of  the  land  serve  to  direct  the  attention  to 
them  and  to  center  it  upon  them,  are  almost  inevitably  in  each  case  the 
heart  of  any  composition  in  which  they  are  included.     (See  Plate  28.) 

Lakes  and  ponds  are  almost  always  formed  by  the  collection  of  Lakei 
water  in  a  valley  hollowed  out  by  some  previously  operating  geologic 
force.  The  form  of  a  lake  is  therefore  commonly  the  form  of  the 
previously  existing  valley;  and,  for  example,  it  will  be  irregular  and 
broken,  with  narrow  arms  and  sharply  jutting  headlands,  or  it  will  be 
rounded,  with  smoothly  flowing  curves  of  bay  and  promontory,  ac- 
cording as  the  original  valley  was  carved  by  rapidly  flowing  water  out 
of  hard  rock,  or  formed,  perhaps  partly  by  erosion,  partly  by  deposition, 
out  of  the  debris  of  a  glacier  or  the  sand  and  gravel  of  the  lower  reaches 
of  a  slowly  flowing  river.     The  promontories  in  the  lake  will  probably 


138 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Islands 


Shores  and 
Beaches 


be  formed  by  spurs  of  the  surrounding  hills  connected  with  the  back- 
lying  high  land,  and  often  running  into  the  lake  with  an  island  or  chain 
of  islands  lying  off  their  points  where  the  original  ground  surface  dips  in 
parts  below  the  water.  The  bays,  similarly,  will  be  likely  to  be  con- 
tinued inland  as  valleys  reaching  into  the  surrounding  hills.  When  a 
lake  is  fed  by  a  considerable  river,  the  portion  of  the  lake  where  the  river 
enters  is  likely  to  be  filled  with  silt,  and  therefore  to  be  shallow,  sandy, 
and  with  a  shore  of  smoothly  curving  outline. 

If  islands  are  water-surrounded  hilltops  in  a  lake,  they  may  lie  in 
a  series  off  a  point,  as  we  have  said,  or  in  some  other  way  their  location 
and  form  may  continue  or  repeat  the  modeling  of  the  surrounding 
land  surface  of  which  they  once  formed  a  part.  If  the  islands  are 
sand  deposits  they  will  lie  where  rivers  come  into  the  lake  or  down 
stream  and  to  leeward  of  points.  If  the  islands  are  in  a  river,  they 
will  be  either  projecting  rocks  or  other  hard  materials  which  have 
remained  when  soft  material  was  eroded  around  them,  or  they  may 
be  sand  bars,  or  perhaps  remains  of  "ox-bow  cut-offs"  where  the 
river  has  shifted  its  course  without  entirely  abandoning  its  old  channel. 

Natural  islands,  then,  are  likely  to  have  some  ordered  relation  to 
each  other  and  to  the  shore,  different  according  to  their  geologic  origins, 
making  them  often  fall  into  very  effective  pictorial  compositions.  These 
can  well  serve  as  suggestions  to  the  landscape  designer  not  only  in  his 
shaping  of  water  areas,  but  in  his  treatment  of  lawns  and  planting  as 
well. 

Though  the  main  shape  of  a  lake  is  usually  the  shape  of  its  pre- 
existing valley,  the  shape  of  the  actual  shore  of  a  lake,  at  least  of  a 
large  lake  and  more  especially  of  the  sea,  is  the  result  of  the  action  of 
the  wind-driven  waves. 

Where  a  shore  or  bank  is  being  cut  away  by  wave  action,  if  the  bank 
is  composed  of  material  of  various  sizes,  —  as  it  probably  will  be  if  it  is 
river  deposit  or  glacier  deposit,  —  the  coarser  material  longer  resists 
the  assault  of  the  waves  and  protrudes  from  the  finer  material.  If 
considerable  masses  of  coarser  material  exist,  they  will  tend  to  form 
promontories,  between  which  the  finer  material  will  be  cut  back  into 
bays.  Moreover,  each  material  will  have  its  natural  angle  of  repose 
in  the  bank  where  it  is  subject  only  to  the  under-cutting  of  the  waves 


GROUND,    ROCK,    WATER 


i?9 


and  the  erosion  of  rain,  the  coarser  material  maintaining  itself  at  a 
steeper  angle,  the  finer  material  lying  at  a  flatter  slope.  And  again, 
on  the  beach  under  the  wash  of  the  waves,  the  angle  of  repose  of  each 
material  will  be  characteristic,  both  fine  and  coarse  lying  less  steep 
than  in  the  bank,  but  the  angle  of  the  finer  material  being  still  the  less. 
On  the  beach  the  finest  stuff  will  be  dragged  farthest  out  by  the  waves, 


SHORES  SUBJECT  TO  WAVE-ACnOK 


SECTION  ON  A-B 


VATER.-LrVEL-^ 


'SII.T-' 


B  I> 


VCMTR-  LEVEL^ 


•ff»cnv»  v</ave  action—^ 


c- 


SAND 


JAND 
"'y^ND  GRAVEL 


SECTION  ON  C-D 


DRAWING  XVII 


so  that  the  ground  at  the  foot  of  the  cut  bank  or  cliff  will  often  consist 
of  rocks  and  coarse  gravel,  while  nearer  the  water  line  will  be  finer 
gravel  and  sand.  Under  the  surface  of  the  water,  the  beach  will  extend 
outward,  composed  of  finer  and  finer  materials,  until  it  is  sufficiently 
below  the  surface  not  to  be  disturbed  by  ordinary  wave  action.  Then 
it  slopes  more  steeply  down  to  the  original  bottom  of  the  body  of  water. 
(See  Drawing  XVII,  above.) 


140 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Streams  and 

Stream 

Banks 


Whenever  an  along-shore  current  is  bearing  sand  or  other  fine 
material  with  it,  if  there  is  a  slackening  of  current,  there  is  a  deposition 
of  the  drift  material  which  it  carries,  and  so  any  sheltered  cove,  or  the 
sheltered  side  of  any  promontory,  would  tend  to  have  its  own  sand  beach, 
and  on  the  downstream  or  down-current  end  of  promontories  there 
would  tend  to  be  a  sand  spit.  If  the  conditions  remain  constant, 
there  will  come  a  time  when  a  beach  will  protect  itself  against  wave 
action,  having  assumed  a  constant  slope,  and  except  for  the  effects 
of  great  storms  or  high  tides  which  send  the  waves  to  attack  the  slope 
behind  the  beach,  a  beach  may  remain  in  the  same  place  for  ages  even 
under  the  assaults  of  the  ocean  surf. 

A  typical  shore  modeled  by  wave-action  from  mixed  materials  of 
various  sizes  would  thus  have  its  promontories  made  of  the  coarser  and 
more  tenacious  material  standing  at  a  steeper  slope  both  in  the  bank 
and  on  the  beach,  and  probably  with  some  outlying  bowlders  on  the 
beach  and  in  the  water.  The  form  of  the  promontories  would  be 
more  or  less  rugged,  expressing  the  structure  of  the  wave-resisting 
material  of  which  they  are  made.  Between  the  promontories  and  in 
other  sheltered  places  might  be  beaches  of  gravel  or  sand,  flatter  in 
slope  and  falling  into  curved  lines  expressing  the  submission  of  the  fine 
material  to  the  forces  of  the  waves  and  currents. 

The  valley  of  a  stream  and  especially  its  immediate  shores  express 
by  their  forms  the  work  of  the  flowing  water  to  which  they  owe  their 
origin. 

Near  its  head-waters,  the  work  of  a  brook  is  almost  entirely  cutting, 
and  the  ground  forms  show  this.  Where  a  current  is  cutting  a  bank 
of  mixed  material,  naturally  it  cuts  at  the  bottom,  carrying  away  what 
it  cuts,  and  the  form  of  the  bank  will  be  produced  by  gravitation  and 
the  work  of  rain,  which  carry  the  material  down  into  the  stream.  The 
more  tenacious  the  ground  is  which  the  brook  is  eroding,  or  the  larger 
its  component  particles,  the  steeper  will  be  the  banks  which  the  brook 
produces.  Any  particularly  large  fragment  of  stone  will  resist  the  cur- 
rent and  perhaps  serve  as  a  protection  to  weaker  material  behind  it. 
On  the  other  hand,  a  bowlder  standing  in  the  stream  will  tend  to  concen- 
trate the  erosive  power  of  the  water  where  the  current  strikes  it,  so  that 
above  it  and  on  each  side  of  it  the  bottom  of  the  stream  may  be  scoured 


GROUND,    ROCK,     WATER i4j_ 

out,  whereas  immediately  downstream  from  it  there  may  be  a  shallow. 
If,  however,  the  bowlder  or  ledge  serves  as  a  dam  and  the  water  falls  over 
it,  then  on  its  downstream  side  will  be  a  pool  cut  by  the  fall.  (See 
Plate  24.) 

Farther  down  the  stream  some  of  the  material  will  be  deposited 
which  was  cut  above,  and  the  shape  of  the  river  bank  will  be  modified 
by  the  formation  of  bars.  In  general  the  larger  material  is  deposited 
first,  as  the  current  slackens,  so  that  gravel  bars  may  lie  in  a  consider- 
able current,  but  sand  bars  only  in  comparatively  slack  water.  In  its 
lower  reaches,  a  stream  is  constantly  depositing  material  at  one  place, 
but  eroding  at  another  place  the  material  which  it  has  previously 
deposited.  The  stream  tends  to  swing  from  side  to  side  of  its  bed, 
rebounding  as  it  were  from  shore  to  shore  as  it  progresses.  The  points 
of  its  greatest  friction  with  its  banks  are  the  points  where  its  current 
is  thus  deflected.  The  current  tends  therefore  to  lie  on  the  outer  side 
of  each  curve  of  the  stream.  The  steep  newly  cut  banks  and  the  deep 
water  will  be  on  this  outer  and  convex  side  and  the  flat  newly  formed 
bars  reaching  gradually  into  the  stream  will  form  points  on  the  concave 
side,  or  extend  slightly  downstream  from  such  points.  (See  Plate 
25.)  In  very  small  streams,  these  effects  are  likely  to  be  offset  by 
variations  in  material  or  even  by  growth  of  trees  and  shrubs  on  the 
banks,  but  where  a  designer  is  endeavoring  to  give  character  to  a  small 
artificial  stream,  some  exaggeration  of  these  essential  characteristics, 
which  by  association  will  lead  the  observer  to  think  of  larger  streams, 
will  give  his  work  individuality  and  verisimilitude.  Even  when  in 
reality  the  current  is  sluggish  and  could  not  cut  for  itself  any  consider- 
able bed,  it  may  be  effective  to  model  the  bed  as  though  it  were  the 
work  of  a  powerful  current  which  might  be  imagined  to  run  in  the 
Spring,  of  which  the  present  trickle  from  pool  to  pool  might  seem  only 
the  diminished  Summer  flow.  In  designing  artificial  brooks  or  rivers  it 
should  be  remembered  that  the  essence  of  a  stream  is  continuity.  Any 
water-body  simulating  a  natural  stream  should  have  an  obvious  place 
whence  it  apparently  comes  and  a  place  into  which  it  apparently  goes ; 
and  with  streams  as  well  as  with  lakes,  this  effect  of  continuity  may  be 
produced  by  the  extension  of  the  water  beyond  the  portion  seen,  and  the 
consequent  suggestion  of  greater  extent  than  actually  exists. 


142 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

The  fact  that  every  stream  is  constantly  changing  in  volume  and 
in  position  as  it  carves  its  banks,  so  that  it  exerts  different  forces  at 
different  times,  makes  it  extremely  hard,  with  a  natural  brook,  to  say 
just  what  forces  produced  the  arrangement  of  materials  which  we  find 
in  a  given  place ;  and  therefore  about  the  only  safe  guide  in  imitating 
such  arrangements  of  material  is,  as  in  all  interpretations  of  nature,  a 
close  familiarity  with  actual  examples,  which  will  give  a  man  an  al- 
most instinctive  feeling  for  reasonable  arrangements,  though  he  may 
not  be  able  to  say  according  to  just  what  assumption  as  to  interaction 
of  natural  forces  he  is  proceeding. 
Waterfalls  Where  a  stream  comes  down  a  sharp  decline  or  vertical  drop  in  its 

bed  in  the  form  of  a  cascade  or  waterfall,  it  becomes  at  once  an  im- 
portant object  in  the  landscape.  The  vertical  display  of  the  sheet  of 
water  makes  it  very  conspicuous.  The  obvious  manifestation  of 
force  and  the  noise  and  sparkle  of  the  water  make  great  appeal  to  the 
attention,  and  the  natural  enframement  of  the  fall  due  to  its  own  cut- 
ting back  into  its  bed  makes  it  almost  certainly  the  center  of  the  com- 
position in  which  it  is  found.  (See  in  order  Plates  14,  13,  12,  and  27.) 
It  is  surprising  how  small  a  stream  of  water  will  make  an  effective  fall. 
Some  of  the  well-known  and  really  striking  cascades  of  the  Alps  and  of 
the  White  Mountains  are  formed  during  most  of  the  year  from  a  stream 
of  water  of  less  than  a  square  foot  in  cross-section,  and  a  considerable 
artificial  cascade  in  a  small-scale  rock  garden  may  be  made  from  the 
flow  from  a  one-inch  pipe.  If  the  volume  of  water  is  at  all  large,  it 
will  have  a  singular  effect  of  unity  and  completeness  if  the  fall  be  a 
single  clean  leap  of  the  whole  body  of  the  stream  from  the  upper  ledge 
to  the  pool  at  its  foot ;  but  a  small  stream  may  often  make  a  more  ef- 
fective fall  if  it  descends  in  a  thin  sheet  from  rock  to  rock  with  a  great 
splashing  and  glistening  of  foam  and  spray.  Where  the  supply  of  water 
is  very  small,  the  effect  of  the  fall  will  depend  very  much  on  the  shape 
of  the  rocks  or  ledges  over  which  the  water  flows.  If  these  are  rounded 
so  that  the  water  clings  to  them,  the  fall  will  be  not  at  all  conspicuous  ; 
if,  however,  they  form  a  series  of  overhanging  lips  so  that  the  water  falls 
free  in  each  case,  the  cascade  will  be  apparently  of  much  greater  mag- 
nitude. 

Just  as  you  can,  elsewhere  along  a  stream,  add  to  its  apparent  im- 


GROUND,    ROCK,     WATER 143 

portance  by  making  its  bed  seem  to  express  the  work  of  a  greater  flow 
of  water  than  now  occupies  this  bed,  so  you  can  magnify  the  impor- 
tance of  a  waterfall  by  making  its  setting  and  the  pool  at  its  base  ap- 
parently the  work  of  a  greater  carving  power  than  there  really  is. 
Indeed  this  relation  of  stream  to  stream  bed  is  what  most  of  us  city 
dwellers  are  accustomed  to  see  who  visit  the  wilder  country  in  Summer 
or  Autumn,  since  the  mountain  stream  flows  bank-full  and  does  its 
work  almost  entirely  in  the  Spring,  and  during  the  rest  of  the  year  the 
shrunken  flow  of  water  occupies  but  a  small  portion  of  the  bed  carved 
by  the  Spring  flood. 

The  landscape  architect  is  not  infrequently  called  upon  to  design  a  Rocks  in 
unit  in  a  naturalistic  landscape,  or  to  treat  a  part  of  a  natural  land-  Naturalistic 
scape,  in  which  rocks  form  the  principal  objects  to  be  arranged. 

The  use  of  rocks  as  a  material  in  landscape  design  is  subject,  like 
the  use  of  all  other  materials,  to  the  laws  of  design  with  which  we  are 
familiar.  If  rockwork  is  to  be  esthetically  good,  it  must  be  apparently 
organized.  If  it  is  to  look  man-made  it  should  be  organized  into  some 
recognizable  man-made  shape,  —  it  should  form  a  wall,  a  terrace,  a  pav- 
ing, a  structure ;  if,  on  the  other  hand,  it  is  to  simulate  the  work  of 
nature,  then  it  must  be  organized  as  groups  of  rocks  in  nature  are,  —  , 

the  rocks  must  be  related  one  to  another  as  though  they  formed  part  of 
a  sea  beach,  of  a  talus  slope,  of  a  water-eroded  slope,  of  an  outcropping 
ledge,  or  of  whatever  natural  rock-made  form  the  designer  chooses,  or 
the  circumstances  require.  This  choice  between  style  and  character 
is,  as  always,  the  first  choice  the  designer  must  make.  For  instance, 
if  the  rocks  are  used  only  as  a  place  for  the  growth  of  rock  plants  on  a 
small  scale,  and  no  rocks  are  naturally  visible  in  the  landscape,  the 
designer  should  carefully  consider  whether  it  would  not  be  better  to 
make  a  frankly  constructed  wall  or  pavement,  in  the  cracks  of  which 
his  plants  might  grow,  rather  than  to  attempt  an  imitation  of  nature 
so  small  as  perhaps  to  appear  incongruous  with  the  surrounding  land- 
scape.*    If,  however,  the  area  in  which  rock  is  being  used  as  an  element 

*  Cf.  "...  where  the  ground  cannot  be  made  to  look  natural,  it  is  better,  at  all 
times,  to  avow  the  interference  of  art  than  to  attempt  an  ineffectual  concealment  of  it." 

Repton,  Sketches  and  Hints  on  Landscape  Gardening,  1794,  P-  27-28  (end  of 
Chapter  III). 


144 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

can  be  completely  screened  from  the  rest  of  the  landscape,  and  is  ex- 
tensive enough  so  that  when  it  is  so  screened  it  will  not  appear  absurdly 
small  in  relation  to  the  necessary  paths  or  steps  or  human  figures  which 
will  be  found  in  it,  then  it  may  be  possible  to  arrange  the  rocks  on  the 
assumption,  as  it  were,  that  they  have  been  put  there  by  some  defi.nite 
working  of  natural  forces,  and  so  to  produce  a  naturalistic  composition 
good  in  itself  and  not  betrayed  by  its  surroundings.  If  the  rocks  are 
used  in  connection  with  existing  natural  rock,  then  the  character  of 
that  natural  rock  of  course  must  be  carefully  studied  and  followed  in 
the  new  work. 

In  his  use  of  rocks  in  design,  the  landscape  architect  must  not  lose 
sight  of  a  few  elementary  geologic  facts.  The  original  substance  of 
the  earth's  crust  was  rock,  and  much  of  its  modeling  still  is  plainly 
based  on  rock  form,  but  in  the  course  of  ages  of  breaking  down  and  trans- 
portation of  fragments,  mostly  by  water,  the  rock  has  commonly  come  to 
be  overlain  by  earth  which  has  assumed  its  own  forms  under  the  forces 
which  created  and  transported  it.  On  the  surface  of  the  earth  to-day, 
we  find  rock,  as  a  striking  element  in  landscape,  still  existing  in  primi- 
tive ledges,  or  broken  away  by  frost  and  still  lying  in  large  masses  show- 
ing by  their  stratification  and  cleavage  the  structure  of  their  original 
ledge,  or  carried  away  from  their  first  site  by  ice  or  water  and  worn  by 
the  friction  of  its  transportation  into  more  or  less  rounded  forms,  or 
broken  and  worn  into  still  smaller  fragments,  the  pieces  losing  their 
individuality  as  the}''  become  parts  of  a  deposit  of  small  bowlders  or 
gravel  or  sand.  There  is  bound  to  be,  therefore,  a  natural  relation 
between  the  kind  and  character  of  the  rock  and  the  larger  forms  in 
which  it  is  found.  It  is  idle  to  attempt  to  imitate  a  naturalistic  ledge- 
outcrop  with  a  collection  of  water-worn  or  ice-worn  bowlders,  for  both 
their  rounded  form  and  their  varied  material  would  preclude  any 
natural  effect.  Equally  impossible  is  it  to  imitate  a  stream-cut 
earth-and-bowlder  bank  by  placing  angular  stones  at  random  on  the 
surface  of  a  gravel  slope. 
Bowlders  Bowlders  are  usually  found  exposed,   in  nature,   where  the  softer 

material  with  which  they  were  once  associated  has  been  removed  by 
some  natural  force  of  erosion.  Bowlders  are  found,  for  instance, 
grouped  in  New  England  fields  where  the  softer  material  of  the  glacial 


GROUND,    ROCK,     WATER  145 

debris  has  been  worn  down  all  around  them  and  they  stand  above  a 
more  or  less  level  surface.  Such  compositions  are  often  very  beautiful, 
but  they  are  usually  ineffective  when  imitated  in  a  small  inclosed  space, 
and  they  commonly  give  scant  opportunity  for  the  growth  of  rock- 
loving  plants. 

Bowlders  are  more  frequently  found  as  parts  of  the  banks  of  ponds 
or  larger  bodies  of  water :  in  places,  that  is,  where  the  surrounding  softer 
material  has  been  cut  away  from  one  side  by  the  waves,  and  the  rocks, 
large  and  small,  lie  where  the  interaction  of  water  wash  and  gravita- 
tion has  left  them.  Such  a  bowlder  bank  and  beach  may  be  imitated 
on  the  shore  of  a  pond,  natural  or  naturalistic,  and  if  in  scale  with  the 
pond  it  may  well  add  a  considerable  element  of  verisimilitude  to  an 
artificial  water-body,  but  except  as  a  shore  such  a  bank  would  be 
unnatural. 

Bowlders  also  may  form  important  elements  in  a  scene  where  they 
have  been  laid  bare  by  the  action  of  a  flowing  stream.  The  stream 
valley,  as  well  as  the  pond-basin,  is  a  good  landscape  character  for  the 
designer  to  imitate,  since  its  shape  makes  it  a  composition  enframed 
and  apart  from  the  rest  of  the  landscape.  (See  Drawing  XVHI,  opp. 
p.  146.)  When  rocks  are  used  as  a  part  of  the  valley  side,  they  will  nor- 
mally form  the  projecting,  steeper,  and  dominant  parts  of  the  banks, 
and  so  assume  importance  in  the  composition. 

Rock  appears  also  in  the  landscape  as  outcropping  ledges  of  natural  Ledges 
stone.  Sometimes  it  has  evidently  been  exposed  by  some  of  the  forces 
which  we  have  discussed ;  sometimes,  lying  at  steep  slopes  or  at  high 
altitudes,  in  cliffs  or  mountain  summits,  it  has  apparently  never  been 
clothed  by  any  softer  covering,  at  least  not  in  recent  geologic  times. 
Such  rock  ledges,  subjected  to  the  action  of  the  weather  and  in  a  great 
part  of  the  world  to  frost,  will  in  time  break  up  on  their  surface  into 
separate  rocks.  If  the  slope  is  not  too  great,  these  rocks  will  still  re- 
main more  or  less  in  their  original  position,  and  by  their  related  forms 
and  the  direction  of  their  fissures  and  perhaps  their  stratification,  show 
the  character  of  their  parent  ledge.  Groups  of  rocks  so  formed  are 
likely  to  produce,  in  nature,  particularly  unified  and  interesting  com- 
positions. They  offer  also  very  suitable  abiding  places  for  rock-loving 
plants,  since  the  fissures  among  them  may  be  deep,  and  all  the  loam 


146 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

which  they  contain  can  be  kept  damp,  —  obviously  a  difficult  matter 
with  the  shallow  soil  which  runs  out  upon  a  rounded  bowlder.  Natu- 
ralistic rockwork  of  this  kind  offers  the  further  advantage  that  it  can 
be  laid  up  at  a  steep  slope  or  even  with  an  overhanging  face,  without 
necessarily  sacrificing  its  natural  appearance.  And  a  proper  choice  of 
the  rock  material,  when  this  is  possible,  so  that  it  shall  have  a  definite 
stratification  and  cleavage  (see  Plate  27),  and  an  arrangement  of  the 
rocks,  here  simulating  a  solid  ledge,  here  closely  grouped,  here  scat- 
tered, but  always  suggesting  the  parallelism  of  the  strata,  will  be  a 
powerful  aid  both  to  the  unity  and  to  the  naturalness  of  the  design. 
The  designer  need  not  be  driven  into  too  great  uniformity  by  thus 
expressing  the  stratification  of  the  supposed  ledge  outcrops.  In  nature 
the  smaller  pieces  dislodged  by  frost  may  be  thrown  into  any  position. 
At  the  foot  of  a  steep  face  of  rock,  for  instance,  there  may  be  a  talus- 
slope,  a  jumbled  pile  of  dislodged  fragments.  Some  study  in  the  ar- 
rangement of  these  more  accidentally-placed  smaller  pieces  will  give 
sufficient  variety  without  sacrificing  naturalness. 

It  is  possible,  where  the  scale  of  the  design  is  large  enough,  to  com- 
bine ledge  outcrop  and  stream-cut  bowlder  bank  and  perhaps  gravel 
and  sand  deposit  in  one  composition,  but  it  should  not  be  attempted 
unless  great  care  can  be  given  to  the  actual  execution,  to  keep  one 
character  dominant  in  each  scene,  for  unity  of  effect. 
Color  and  In  all  designs  of  rock,  whether  in  ledge  or  in  bowlder  bank,  the 

jfnriJ^  texture  and  the  color  of  the  rock  are  very  important.     The  rock  nor- 

mally gives  an  effect  of  strength  and  solidity  in  the  design,  and  for  this 
it  does  not  need  bright  color.  It  is  rarely  desirable  therefore  to  have 
the  color  of  the  larger  rocks  and  ledges  very  conspicuous.  Moreover, 
to  give  an  appearance  of  age  and  so  of  naturalness  to  the  design, 
weathered  or  lichened  rocks  should  be  used  if  possible.  A  light  colored 
rock  is  likely,  in  most  localities,  to  look  as  if  it  were  newly  exposed  to 
the  weather.  A  rock  dug  from  beneath  the  ground  will  retain  for  years 
an  unnaturally  bare  appearance  which  makes  it  very  hard  to  deal 
with  in  this  sort  of  design.  It  should  not  be  forgotten,  however,  that 
some  mosses  grow  only  in  shade  and  dampness,  and  some  lichens  best 
in  sun.  If  they  are  to  persist,  the  rocks  on  which  they  grow  must  be 
used  in  situations  similar  to  those  from  which  they  came. 


Rocks 


GROUND,    ROCK,     WATER 147 

However  well  the  rockwork  may  be  done,  it  will  still  depend  on  the  Rock  Planting 
planting  for  its  success.  It  is  essential  not  only  to  choose  plants  which 
naturally  live  —  or  at  least  can  live  —  in  rocky  places,  but  to  preserve 
a  scale  relation  between  rock  and  planting  which  will  not  dwarf  the 
rock,  and  a  texture-contrast  so  that  each  material  may  accent  the 
effect  of  the  other.  (See  again  Plate  27  and  also  35.)  The  intended 
planting  must  be  borne  in  mind  when  the  rocks  are  arranged,  not  only 
so  that  proper  loam-spaces  may  be  left  for  the  plants,  but  so  that  when 
the  planting  is  finally  set  out  it  shall  not  overpower  or  conceal  rock- 
compositions  which  were  apparently  striking  enough  before  the  plant- 
ing was  introduced. 

As  any  rockwork  can  at  best  be  only  suggested  on  plan,  nothing 
but  skillful,  patient,  practical  superintendence  will  give  results  worthy 
of  consideration,  and  no  mean  ability  in  visualizing  the  final  result  is 
required  of  the  superintendent  who  can  see  his  way  efficiently  and  di- 
rectly through  the  confusion  and  structural  exigencies  of  the  early  stages 
of  the  work  to  a  final  consistent  natural  effect. 

In  the  informal  modeling  of  the  ground  surface  which  the  land-  Minor 
scape  architect  is  called  on  to  do  in  his  usual  practice,  particularly  in  p°'^'^'^H  of 
his  smaller  work,  he  has  seldom  the  untrammeled  opportunity  to  ap-  Surface 
proximate  to  some  one  landscape  character,  as  in  the  various  examples 
which  we  have  just  discussed.     He  is  engaged  rather  in  providing  for 
all  the  economic  necessities,  —  roads,  drainage,  balance  of  cut  and  fill, 
and  so  on.     Nevertheless  he  suggests  such  natural  character  as  he  can, 
—  at  any  rate  he  displays  the  natural  forms  of  his  trees,  shrubs,  flowers, 
and  turf  to  best  advantage  ;  and  with  all  this  he  makes  a  ground  surface 
which  shall  be  as  interesting  and  as  compositionally  excellent  as  pos- 
sible.    Some  general   considerations   relating  to  this   kind  of  ground- 
modeling  are  worth  discussion. 

In  any  open  area  of  considerable  size  which  has  only  slight  modula- 
tions of  surface,  the  line  of  view  of  the  observer  is  almost  certain  to  be 
nearly  parallel  to  the  surface.  A  very  slight  elevation  will  therefore 
probably  conceal  what  lies  immediately  behind  it,  and  on  account  of 
this  fact  the  landscape  architect  can  greatly  change  the  appearance  of 
the  surface  without  any  great  change  in  the  relative  elevations  of  its 
parts. 


148 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

If  his  object  is  to  unify  the  whole  surface,  so  that  its  total  extent 
and  its  main  form  are  at  once  to  be  seen,  the  slight  elevations  and 
depressions  which  he  may  make  for  variety  in  the  surface  will  be  re- 
lated sequentially  to  each  other :  they  will  be  plainly  all  undulations 
and  modulations  of  the  same  surface.  The  designer  may  even  take  pains 
in  this  case  that  no  part  of  the  surface  is  concealed  from  the  eye  :  he 
may  depend  for  interest  and  variety  on  the  apparent  differences  in  tex- 
ture and  color  caused  by  the  slight  differences  in  the  relation  of  the 
angle  of  slope  to  the  view  of  the  observer.  If  the  landscape  be  seen 
in  the  low  light  and  long  shadows  of  morning  or  evening,  such  slight 
variations  in  surface  will  give  great  differences  in  appearance  and  may 
quite  sufficiently  distinguish  part  from  part  without  interrupting  the 
whole.  If,  however,  the  designer  wishes  to  have  a  more  striking  and 
definite  difference  between  certain  parts  of  the  surface,  he  may  do  so 
by  making  a  nearer  rise  conceal  a  farther  hollow.  If  the  line  of  sight 
over  the  top  of  the  rise  misses  the  ground  beyond  by  only  a  few  inches, 
still  it  may  be  enough  to  bring  out  the  silhouette  of  the  nearer  ground 
against  a  background  considerably  more  remote.  If  then  either  por- 
tion of  the  composition  is  in  light  when  the  other  is  in  shadow,  the 
difference  may  be  very  marked,  so  marked  perhaps  as  to  change  the 
composition  from  one  of  sequential  modeling  of  surface  to  one  of  har- 
mony of  masses  and  contrast  of  light  and  shade. 
Banks  There  are  many  cases  where  the  landscape  architect  is  obliged  to 

make  rather  steep  slopes  for  a  short  distance,  not  primarily  for  the  sake 
of  the  landscape  appearance  but  to  provide  for  a  road  or  some  such 
structure.*  If  the  purpose  of  the  designer  is  to  make  the  whole  com- 
position as  natural  as  possible,  he  may  diminish  the  incongruity  of  such 
grading  in  two  ways.  He  may  so  arrange  it  that  from  the  important 
viewpoints  the  line  of  sight  strikes  first  on  a  naturally  modeled  sur- 
face on  the  hither  side  of  the  depression  and  strikes  again  on  a  naturally 
modeled  surface  beyond  it,  the  observer  being  left  to  infer  that  what 
he  does  not  see  between  these  two  points  is  like  the  surfaces  which  he 
does  see.  It  may  be,  however,  that  the  re-graded  surface  cannot  be 
concealed  from  the  observer.     This  will  plainly  be  the  case,  for  in- 

*  Cf.  article  by  J.  C.  Olmsted,  The  Treatment  of  Slopes  and  Banks,  in  Garden  and 
Forest,  Sept.  5,  1888,  with  cross-sections.     (See  References.) 


GROUND,    ROCK,    WATER 


149 


stance,  when  the  obsen'er  travels  along  a  road  and  looks  at  its  side 
slopes.  Here  the  designer  will  endeavor  if  possible  to  make  the  eleva- 
tions or  depressions  which  he  must  bring  about  in  the  surface  of  the 
ground  seem  as  though  they  had  come  about  naturally.  In  some  cases 
this  is  possible,  and  the  hollow  through  which  a  road  runs,  or  the  little 


aOrtt  TREATMEArrS  or  51DPE3  or  various  JTCrPNEii 


-XOA'P  -♦ 


lACROCK 


OLD  SURFACE. - 


SEQUENTIAL  JUNCTtOAf 
OrNtVANp  OLP  il/RrACEC 


--rfeoAP- 


-rttWaulVACt 


uNC  or  SI<«HT 


COAiCEALnZNT  OT  ROAP 
BY  GEAPlA^q 


TYPICAL  5ECT10Ar5  IN  INFORMAL  ROAJ)  (^RftPINC 


DRAWING  XIX 


level  on  which  a  shelter  stands,  may  look  as  though  it  had  been  there 
for  ages  and  had  merely  been  taken  advantage  of  by  the  designer.  On 
the  other  hand,  there  are  many  cases  where  it  is  impossible  to  conceal 
from  any  intelligent  observer  that  the  forms  of  the  ground  at  which 
he  is  looking  were  made  by  man,  for  man's  purposes.  But  even  here  a 
great  deal  can  be  done  to  make  these  forms  as  little  incongruous  as 
need  be  with  the  natural  forms  which  make  the  rest  of  the  composition. 
(See   Drawing   XIX,    above.)     In    constructing    his   new  slopes   the 


I50 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

designer  can  observe  what  typical  forms  his  material  would  take  under 
the  natural  forces  at  work  in  the  surrounding  landscape,  and  what  forms 
it  actually  does  take  in  the  surfaces  immediately  adjacent  to  his  work. 
He  can  then  arrange  his  slopes  so  that  at  least  they  may  be  of  a  general 
form  similar  to  those  found  in  the  locality,  and  of  a  sequential  and  smooth 
flow  of  surface,  continuous  with  that  of  the  forms  into  which  they  should 
merge.  A  judicious  choice  of  variety  in  form  and  steepness  of  slope, 
special  care  in  the  junction  of  the  new  surfaces  with  the  old,  and  stu- 
dious avoidance  of  unduly  symmetrical  forms  or  straight  lines  or  sharp 
angles  —  at  least  when  dealing  with  soft  materials  —  will  produce  a 
form  unity  between  the  designer's  work  and  the  landscape  which  will 
go  a  long  way  towards  unifying  the  composition  which  includes  both. 
It  should  be  said,  too,  that  the  natural  forms  of  earth  surface  are 
those  which  are  assumed  by  the  particular  material  in  accord  with  all 
the  natural  forces  at  work  —  gravitation,  rain-wash,  etc. —  and  these 
forms  are  therefore  in  most  cases  changing  but  slowly.  Imitations  of 
these  forms  therefore  would  presumably  be  stable  if  made  of  the  same 
material.  The  greatest  steepness  of  a  bank  will  be  fixed  by  the  angle 
of  stability  of  its  component  material  under  the  forces  to  which  it  will 
be  exposed.  An  earth  bank  subject  to  the  erosion  of  running  water 
will  practically  never  reach  an  angle  of  repose,  and  must  be  protected 
by  some  erosion-resisting  surface.  An  earth  bank  which  may  at  times 
be  very  wet,  though  not  actually  eroded,  will  still  tend  to  assume  a  low 
angle  of  repose,  and  may  have  to  be  held  in  place  by  the  roots  of  vege- 
tation or  by  bowlders.  In  general,  the  choice  of  form  and  slope  at  the 
disposal  of  the  designer  in  any  particular  case  will  be  restricted,  not  only 
by  geologic  congruity  to  natural  form  and  by  compositional  form  unity 
with  the  surrounding  forms,  but  also  by  the  physical  characteristics 
of  his  materials. 


CHAPTER   IX 

PLANTING  DESIGN 

PiANTS  AS  MATERIAL  IN  LANDSCAPE  DESIGN  —  The  time  element  in  planting  design  — 
Relation  of  planting  design  and  maintenance  —  Plant  characteristics  in  land- 
scape DESIGN  —  Plant  forms  —  Classes  of  tree  forms  and  their  uses  in  design  — 
Form  the  expression  of  mode  of  growth  —  Winter  tree  form  —  Form  in  topiary  work 

—  Plant  texture  —  Plant  color  —  Effect  of  character  of  leaves  on  foliage  color 

—  Range  of  foliage  color  —  Restricted  use  of  other  colors  than  green  —  Effects  of 
foliage  color  —  Contrast  of  color  in  differentiation  of  units  in  design  —  Foliage 
color  and  aerial  perspective  —  Use  of  "colored"  foliage  —  Autumn  foliage  — 
Winter  color,  bark,  and  fruit  —  Color  of  flower  —  Practical  difficulties  of  design 
in  flower  color  —  Circumstances  harmonizing  flower  colors  —  Mass  relation  in 
flower  color — Plant  character— Species  and  character  —  Individual  plant 
character  —  Character  and  environment  —  Relation  of  plant  character  and  land- 
scape character  —  "  Expression  "  and  character  —  Association  and  symbolism  — 
Plantations  —  Inclosing  plantations  —  Outline,  modeling,  and  treatment  of 
informal  inclosing  plantations  —  Hedges  —  Low  hedges  and  edgings  —  Speci- 
men trees  and  shrubs  —  Tree  and  shrub  groups  • —  Composition  of  groups  — 
Shrub  beds  —  Herbaceous  beds  and  borders  —  Flowerbeds  as  parts  of  a  garden 
inclosed  —  Arrangement  of  plants  in  relation  to  form  of  bed  and  form  of  plants  — 
Arrangement  of  plants  in  relation  to  time  of  bloom  —  Arrangement  of  plants  in 
relation  to  color  —  Grouping  of  plants  according  to  character  —  Planting  as 
surface  decoration  —  Carpet  bedding  and  parterres  —  Ground  cover  —  Turf  — 
Pl-^nting  in  relation  to  topography  —  Waterside  planting  —  Planting  in 
relation  to  architectural  structures  —  Planting  as  enframement  —  Planting 
as  transition  between  ground  and  structure  —  Planting  as  decoration  of  structure. 

The  architect,  the  sculptor,  or  the  painter  can  create,  within  the  Plants  as 
limits  of  his  material,  practically  any  shape,  color,  or  texture  that  he  ^^J^^T^pJ" 
may  think  of,  and  in  his  design  there  are  no  units  other  than  those  which  Design 
he   determines.     The   landscape   architect,    however,    in   designing   in 
foliage,  must  for  the  most  part  choose  those  shapes,  colors,  and  textures 
which  already  naturally  exist.     However  completely  his  foliage  masses 
and  his  flower  beds  are  unified,  they  still  are  collections  of  recognizable 

151 


152 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


The  Time  Ele- 
ment in 
Planting 
Design 


individuals ;  and  in  many  landscape  designs  individual  plants  are 
necessarily  the  essential  elements  of  the  composition,  and  must  be  so 
treated.  Plants  are  living  things  :  they  grow  from  year  to  year,  come 
to  the  height  of  their  development,  and  die ;  they  change  their  appear- 
ance with  the  seasons ;  the  form  of  each  expresses  its  particular  racial 
inheritance  and  the  accidents  of  its  individual  life.  Plants  have  in- 
evitably certain  conditions  of  existence,  certain  requirements  of  soil, 
climate,  and  so  on,  and  certain  associations  in  our  minds  with  other 
plants,  with  various  uses,  and  with  the  places  where  they  naturally  are 
found.  The  landscape  designer  is  not  free,  therefore,  either  economi- 
cally or  esthetically,  to  disregard  the  individuality  of  the  plant  material 
with  which  he  deals. 

Through  the  growth  of  plants,  the  landscape  designer  has  an  oppor- 
tunity which  other  designers  have  not :  for  although  he  may  by  sufficient 
expenditure  produce  in  a  short  time  approximately  the  effect  which  he 
desires,  he  may,  on  the  other  hand,  with  comparatively  little  expense 
set  out  small  plants  and  trust  to  their  growth  to  bring  about  in  time  the 
effect  which  he  originally  had  in  mind.  Granted  this  element  of  time, 
the  landscape  architect  has  in  vegetation  a  very  plastic  material  with 
which  he  can  produce  masses  of  manifold  shapes,  and  if  necessary  of 
great  size.  This  advantage  of  the  landscape  designer  brings  with  it  a 
corresponding  disadvantage :  he  cannot  judge  and  change  and  perfect 
his  design  before  it  leaves  his  hand,  as  the  sculptor  does,  —  often  indeed 
his  work  comes  to  its  perfection  long  after  he  is  dead.  He  must  there- 
fore, with  little  aid  from  drawings  and  often  with  little  aid  from  the 
present  condition  of  the  ground,  be  able  to  imagine  his  completed  design 
and  to  foresee  and  take  account  of  the  changes  through  which  his 
planting  must  go  from  its  present  state  to  its  full  expression. 

The  landscape  architect  must  consider  the  changes  in  the  appear- 
ance of  his  plants  during  their  whole  growth  as  well  as  their  cycle  of 
seasonal  changes,  and  he  must  either  so  arrange  his  design  that  it  is 
consistently  practical  and  beautiful  at  all  times,  or  he  must  choose  some 
particular  time,  some  season  of  the  year  or  some  future  year,  when  his 
design  is  to  be  at  its  best,  and  in  designing  have  in  mind  the  appear- 
ance of  the  plants  at  that  time,  neglecting  to  some  extent  their  appear- 
ance before  and  after. 


PLANTING    DESIGN 153 

Closeness  of  texture,   symmetry  of  shape,   similarity  of  plant  to  Relation  of 
plant,  may  be  continued  for  a  long  while  under  good  maintenance,  or  ^(,^"'^"f„^ 
quickly  lost  without  it.     Plants  of  varying  robustness  and  speed  of  Maintenance 
growth  may  thrive  together  under  good  maintenance,  but  otherwise 
the  stronger  soon  destroy  the  weaker.     Plants  may  be  set  out  close 
together  for  immediate  effect,  and  good  effect  be  later  maintained  if 
they  be  thinned  at  the  appropriate  time.     If  this  future  thinning  cannot 
be  relied  on,  either  present  or  future  effect  must  be  sacrificed  in  the 
planting.     Design  will  therefore  often  depend  on  the  degree  of  mainte- 
nance that  can  be  expected. 

The  characteristics  of  plants,  over  which,   as  we  have  seen,  the  Plant 
landscape  architect  has  little  or  no  control,  have  inevitably  a  great  in-   -^  landscap" 
fluence  on  the  effect  of  any  design  in  which  vegetation  is  used  as  a  Design 
material.     The  forms,  colors,  and  textures  offered  by  plants  give  to  the 
designer  certain  opportunities,  but  also  they  set  for  him  certain  limits. 
The  natural  character  of  each  plant,   and  the  associations  which  in 
most  men's  minds  cling  to  certain  plants,  give  a  plant  a  complex  in- 
dividuality, and  make  it  by  no  means  an  easy  thing  to  use  in  esthetic 
composition.     The    understanding    of    these    characteristics    of    plant 
material  constitutes  no  inconsiderable  part  of  the  skill  of  the  landscape 
architect.     Indeed,  it  is  special  knowledge  like  this  which  differentiates 
the  landscape  architect  from  other  designers. 

In  the  forms  of  trees  and  shrubs  and  herbaceous  plants  with  which  Plant  Forms 
the  landscape  architect  deals  there  is  a  very  great  variety.  The  forms 
are  similar  only  in  the  fact  that  they  are  all  the  expressions  of  the  growth 
of  the  individual  plant,  and  that  they  are  all  more  or  less  symmetrical 
on  a  central  axis.  From  the  physical  necessities  of  their  growth,  plants 
are  balanced  forms,  either  a  mass  of  foliage  upon  a  central  stalk,  or  a 
number  of  separate  branches  diverging  more  or  less  consistently  from 
the  vertical,  and  forming  a  typically  symmetrical  mass  of  leafage  as 
each  twig  and  leaf  equally  seeks  the  light.  Almost  any  free-standing 
plant,  not  distorted  by  some  unusual  influence,  will  be,  therefore,  as  far 
as  shape  goes,  an  individual  and  self-sufficient  object  in  the  composition. 
The  same  general  considerations  as  to  the  use  of  these  forms  in  compo- 
sition apply  equally  to  all  kinds  of  plants,  but  with  herbaceous  plants,* 

*  See  discussion  of  herbaceous  border  and  flower  beds  later  in  this  chapter. 


154 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Classes  of 
Tree  Forms 
and  their 
Uses  in 
Design 


and  to  a  less  degree  with  shrubs,  their  greater  interest  lies  in  their 
flower,  and  they  are  more  often  planted  in  masses  where  their  indi- 
vidual shape  is  of  little  account.  We  shall  discuss  therefore  the  shapes 
of  trees  only,  but  whatever  we  discover  about  them  can  be  applied,  in  a 
general  way,  as  well  to  shrubs  and  herbaceous  plants. 

In  their  main  outline  —  in  the  case  of  deciduous  trees  particularly 
when  this  outline  is  filled  in  by  foliage  —  the  shapes  of  trees  may  be 
thought  of  in  certain  classes,  which  are  perhaps  more  worth  discussion 
than  others  for  us  because  they  are  more  common  in  this  country  or 
because  they  have  more  definite  use  in  design. 

There  are  those  trees  which  are  low,  rounded,  crouching,  broad  at 
the  base,  and  which  tend  to  form  an  undulation  rather  than  an  object 
in  the  distance;  and  those  which,  while  round-headed,  stand  high, 
perhaps  on  a  considerable  trunk,  and  arrest  the  attention  as  separate 
objects  through  the  break  that  their  upstanding  forms  make  with  the 
skyline.  Some  of  these  rounded  trees,  like  the  horse-chestnut  before 
it  reaches  old  age,  carry  their  branches  close  together,  well  covered 
with  leaves,  no  branch  protruding  far  beyond  its  fellows,  so  that  the 
whole  tree  presents  a  fairly  even  surface  with  little  interest  of  detail  of 
foliage  mass  and  little  play  of  light  and  shade.  Such  trees  may  be  used 
in  formal  rows  or  where  a  single  heavy  free-standing  specimen  is  desired, 
or  to  give  a  greater  density  and  solidity  to  a  projecting  point  of  a  group 
of  other  trees.  Most  of  the  rounded  trees  have  more  variation  in  the 
subordinate  forms  caused  by  their  branch  arrangement.  They  may 
be  less  strikingly  individual,  but  they  blend  better  with  other  members 
of  a  tree  group,  and  they  have  a  more  sustained  interest  in  their  play  of 
light  and  shade  and  texture. 

Some  trees  are  conical  in  shape.  They  draw  the  eye  not  only 
through  their  mass  but  through  the  convergence  of  the  attention  op 
their  pointed  top  which,  as  it  were,  contains  the  essence  of  the  expression 
of  the  whole  tree.  Some  trees  with  a  vertical  trunk,  but  horizontal 
branches,  form  a  broad-based  cone,  composed  of  rhythmic  repeats 
of  similar  branch  masses,  a  characteristic  particularly  exemplified  by 
the  Rocky  Mountain  blue  spruce.  Such  a  tree,  on  account  of  this  sub- 
ordinate formality  of  its  branch  arrangement,  as  well  as  on  account  of 
its  definite  conical  shape,   has   a   distinct   and  striking  individuality. 


P  LANTING    DESIGN 155 

Some  conical  trees  are  fastigiate,  with  vertical  branches  held  close  to 
the  trunk,  forming  almost  a  column  or  an  exclamation  point,  like  the 
Lombardy  poplar.  A  conical  tree  can  be  used  as  an  individual  speci- 
men, or  as  one  of  several  specimens  formally  disposed,  but  it  is  more 
difficult  to  treat  than  almost  any  other  tree  as  a  component  of  a  larger 
planting  in  which  the  individual  trees  are  intended  to  subordinate  their 
shape  to  that  of  the  whole  foliage  mass. 

There  is  the  tree  of  the  shape  of  a  vase  or  a  fountain,  the  notable 
example  being  the  American  elm,  which  attracts  the  attention  less  by 
its  mass  than  by  the  expression  of  its  growth,  and  which  casts  consider- 
able shade  without  occupying  any  great  space  of  ground.  Then  there 
are  trees  of  a  weeping  or  pendulous  habit  of  branching  which  tends  to 
lead  the  eye  downward,  in  direct  contrast  with  the  conical  forms.  Also 
there  are  many  irregular  forms  like  that  of  an  old  pasture  white  pine,  — 
characteristic,  but  more  a  matter  of  character  than  of  describable  shape. 

Each  species  of   tree,  growing  untrammeled,  tends    to  assume  its  Form  the 
particular  tvpical  form,  and  each  species  of  tree  has  one  form  in  youth,  ^'^P^"^]'^'"-  0/ 
one  at  maturity,  another  m  old  age.*     All  trees,  each  after  its  kind.  Growth 
are  influenced  in  their  form  by  the  amount  of  nourishment  they  find 
in  the  soil  where  they  grow,  by  the  shade  conditions  caused  by  com- 
petition with  other  trees  and  by  the  force  of  the  wind.     All  forms  of 
trees  are  made  by  the  forms  and  disposition  of  their  subordinate  parts, 
of  branches  and  sprays  in  relation  to  the  trunk;   they  are  a  manifesta- 
tion of  the  method  of  growth  of  the  tree,  and  a  record  of  the  circum- 

*  "  Of  form  it  may,  furthermore,  be  said  that  a  tree  is  not  well  understood  until  it  is 
understood  in  all  the  stages  of  its  growth.  The  typical  shape  of  a  young  tree  often 
differs  very  greatly  from  the  typical  shape  of  the  same  tree  at  maturity,  and  this  again 
from  its  typical  shape  in  old  age ;  and,  in  planting,  regard  must  be  paid  to  the  ques- 
tion whether  an  immediate  effect  or  a  long-postponed  effect  ought  to  be  most  consid- 
ered. For  example,  a  tree  set  in  isolation  on  a  lawn  in  full  view  from  the  house  ought 
to  be  beautiful  in  youth  and  at  the  same  time  give  promise  of  beauty  (perhaps  of  a 
different  kind  but  still  appropriate)  in  later  years  ;  whereas  in  planting  a  belt  or  wood 
in  the  distance,  the  principal  trees  should  be  so  chosen  that  they  will  look  better  and 
better  the  older  they  grow,  while  present  effect  may  be  chiefly  considered  in  others 
which  are  destined  to  be  cut  as  development  progresses." 

The  Artistic  Aspects  of  Trees,  IV,  in  Garden  and  Forest,  vol.  I,  p.  373.  (See  Refer- 
ences.) 


156 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

stances  through  which  the  tree  has  come  to  its  present  state.  The 
greater  number  of  deciduous  trees  express  their  individuahty  of  growth 
in  forms  of  softer  and  less  definite  outline  which,  though  absolutely 
characteristic  for  each  species,  are  characteristic  in  a  subtler  way,  and 
render  the  trees  recognizable  much  as  men  are  recognizable,  unmis- 
takably, but  hardly  through  the  recognition  of  any  definitely  describable 
feature.  Some  trees  of  no  very  definite  branch  arrangement  like  the 
apple,  some  trees  which  grow  in  particularly  exposed  situations,  like 
the  Monterey  cypress,  long-lived  trees  like  the  white  oak,  trees  with 
wood  that  resists  decay  and  can  survive  the  mutilations  of  wind  and 
snow  like  the  cedar,  any  of  these  may  through  the  result  of  exposure,  or 
merely  in  some  cases  as  the  result  of  great  age,  assume  picturesque  forms 
which  have  great  individuality  and  pictorial  interest.  Such  forms  may 
be  appropriate  to  a  free-standing  specimen  tree  which  is  a  point  of 
interest  in  itself,  or  to  a  tree  adding  interest  to  a  larger  foliage  mass  of 
which  it  is  an  outlying  unit,  and  yet  individuality  of  this  kind  does  not 
prevent  trees  from  forming  groups  or  masses  where  the  unity  of  the 
individual  is  merged  in  the  effect  of  the  group. 
Winter  Tree  Deciduous   trees  often   manifest   their   character  more  plainly  in 

Form  winter,  when  their  peculiar  manner  of  growth,  their  distinctive  attitude 

of  trunk  and  branches,  is  not  cloaked  by  their  summer  garb  of  foliage. 
In  the  intricacy  of  snow-covered  winter  branches,  in  the  lacework  of 
naked  trees  against  the  sunset  sky,  never  repeating  itself  and  yet 
characteristic  in  its  pattern  for  the  oak,  the  beech,  the  hornbeam,  and  for 
every  different  kind  of  tree,  there  is  certainly  no  less  beauty  than  in 
the  simpler  and  more  obvious  forms  of  the  trees  in  their  summer  guise. 
(See  Plate  15  and  compare  Plates  16  and  18.) 
Form  in  At  the  other  extreme  from  this  beauty  of  characteristic  structure. 

Topiary  Work  jg  ^j^g  effect  of  simplified  and  definite  man-made  shape  obtainable  in 
topiary  work.*  Plants  so  treated  have  suffered  a  fundamental  change  of 
character  as  units  in  landscape  design.  They  have  ceased  to  express  by 
their  form  their  own  individuality  and  have  become  architectural  or 
sculptural  elements  expressing  the  will  of  man.  They  are  still  living 
objects,  however,  and  in  their  texture  they  still  to  some  extent  reveal 
their  growth,  and  thus  they  form  an  intermediate  step  between  free- 

*  Cf.  Curtis  and  Gibsorij  The  Book  oj  Topiary.     (See  References.) 


PLANTING    DESIGN 


^57 


growing  plants  on  the  one  hand  and  such  things  as  statues  and  steps 
on  the  other.  (See  Drawing  VI,  opp.  p.  48,  and  Drawing  XX,  opp. 
p.  158.) 

The  texture  of  a  plant  is  the  result  of  the  shape,  size,  and  surface  Plant 
of  the  leaves,  their  attitude  and  grouping  on  the  twigs  and  smaller  ^^■^'"'■' 
boughs,  and  their  arrangement  to  make  up  the  whole  foliage  mass  of 
the  plant.  Large  leaves,  particularly  such  as  are  heavy  and  set  stiffly 
upon  the  twigs,  tend  to  give  a  plant  a  coarse  texture  and  a  certain 
strength  and  robustness  of  appearance.  Small  leaves,  and  those  which 
are  so  set  that  they  tremble  upon  their  stalks,  tend  to  give  a  plant  a 
certain  haziness  of  outline  and  an  eifect  of  softness  and  delicacy.  Leaves 
numerous  and  close-set,  like  those  of  many  evergreens,  will  give  the 
foliage  masses  of  the  separate  boughs,  and  usuallj'  indeed  a  whole  tree, 
an  appearance  of  solidity  and  heaviness,  which  even  apart  from  its 
color  will  distinguish  it  from  deciduous  trees.  Glossy  leaves,  or  leaves 
which  are  lighter  on  one  side,  will  bring  to  the  texture  of  the  foliage  of 
a  tree  a  certain  gayety  and  sparkle,  and  will  at  times  cause  the  tree 
apparently  quite  to  change  its  texture  at  the  will  of  the  wind.  The 
grouping  of  the  leaves  upon  the  twigs  and  the  grouping  of  the  twigs  in 
turn  upon  the  boughs  give  a  different  pattern  in  the  texture  of  trees 
according  to  their  kind.  (For  examples  of  various  textures  of  foliage, 
see  Plates  4,  9,  21,  25,  26,  and  27.) 

Texture  is  the  form  of  small  parts  :  there  must  exist  a  scale  relation 
between  any  texture  and  the  form  which  it  clothes.  The  leaves  of  the 
hyacinths  in  the  field  of  a  Dutch  grower  make  a  textured  carpet  of  the 
ground,  the  leaves  of  one  hyacinth  in  a  pot  can  onh''  be  considered  as 
related  forms.  A  forest  seen  from  a  distant  mountain  has  a  furry  soft 
texture  (see  Frontispiece)  ;  nearer  at  hand  this  texture  is  seen  to  be 
made  up  of  separate  trees.  This  scale  relation  of  texture  is  a  very  im- 
portant consideration  in  planting  design.  The  landscape  architect 
might  plant  a  mile-long  straight  avenue  of  hemlocks  and  the  effect 
of  the  row  of  trees  might  be  a  straight  line,  although  the  individual 
trees  making  up  this  line  might  be  twenty  feet  in  diameter  and  thirty 
feet  apart.  If,  however,  the  designer  wished  to  plant  an  edging  in  a 
straight  line  bounding  a  flower  bed  five  feet  long,  he  would  be  compelled 
to  use  such  things  as  box  bushes,  not  more  than  six  inches  in  diameter 


158 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

and  six  inches  apart,  and  indeed  if  he  wished  his  bounding  line  to  appear 
at  all  rigidly  straight,  he  would  be  obliged  to  clip  his  box  bushes  so  that 
the  unit  of  the  texture  of  his  border  would  be  changed  from  that  of  the 
individual  bush  to  the  smaller-scale  unit  of  the  individual  leaf.  That 
is,  in  any  planting  mass  which  is  to  tell  as  a  unified  shape,  the  texture 
must  not  be  so  coarse  in  relation  to  the  size  of  the  mass  as  to  tell  as 
subordinate  shapes  breaking  up  the  perception  of  the  main  shape  in- 
tended in  the  design. 

The  considerations  of  texture  in  planting  design  derive  additional 
importance  from  the  fact  that  whereas  the  size  and  form  of  a  plant  can 
be  predicted  only  in  a  general  way,  and  will  be  dependent  on  local  condi- 
tions and  accidents  of  wind  and  weather,  the  texture  of  a  plant  of  any 
given  kind  is  practically  a  definite  and  predictable  thing,  and  planned 
effects  in  plant  textures  are  therefore  fairly  sure  of  realization.  A 
plantation  may  be  unified  by  being  composed  throughout  of  plants  of 
similar  texture.  Also  one  planted  area  may  be  differentiated  from  an- 
other by  a  difference  in  texture  of  its  component  plants.  A  projecting 
point  in  a  plantation,  a  free-standing  mass,  may  be  strengthened  by 
being  composed  of  plants  of  dense  and  heavy  texture.  A  bay  in  a 
plantation  may  be  to  some  extent  subordinated,  or  a  plantation  may 
within  certain  limits  be  given  a  certain  additional  effect  of  distance, 
by  being  composed  of  plants  of  a  fine  and  soft  texture  of  foliage.  If  it  is 
desirable  to  make  one  plant  mass  stand  out  distinctly  from  a  back- 
ground of  other  plants,  this  may  be  done  by  a  difference  in  texture  be- 
tween free-standing  mass  and  background  according  to  the  circum- 
stances of  the  case,  for  example,  a  sharp-cut  heavy-textured  evergreen 
against  a  misty  background  of  willows,  or  a  clump  of  delicate  yellow 
birch  backed  by  a  pine  wood.  In  a  similar  way  a  bed  in  a  garden  may  be 
unified  and  diversified  by  a  judicious  choice  of  the  textures  which  can 
be  produced  by  the  herbaceous  plants  in  it.  The  corners  of  a  bed  may 
be  strengthened  by  the  heavy  leaves  of  the  showy  stonecrop  or  the 
plantain-lily ;  the  center  of  the  bed  may  be  effectively  filled  by  the 
solid  and  lasting  green  of  peonies ;  along  the  side  of  the  bed  the  deli- 
cate misty  flower  of  gypsophila  might  be  paneled  with  clumps  of  iris, 
and  even  without  the  color  of  the  flowers  such  a  bed  might  be  satis- 
factory in  design  from  the  effect  of  its  texture  alone. 


^' 


PLANTING    DESIGN  159 

The  color  of  the  foliage  of  plants  as  it  appears  in  the  landscape  is  Plant  Color 
only  in  part  dependent  on  the  color  of  the  individual  leaves  as  seen  near 
at  hand.  A  plant  which  carries  many  leaves  close  together,  forming  Effect  of 
an  almost  unbroken  surface,  will  appear  to  be  almost  of  one  uniform  Character  of 
color.  A  plant  with  a  more  open  foliage  will  have  the  general  color  of  foHage  Color 
its  leaves  stippled  with  dark  points  of  shadow  or  perhaps  scattered  with 
brilliant  flecks  of  light  where  the  background  of  the  shadowy  interior 
of  the  foliage  mass  or  the  sunlit  space  beyond  shows  through  the  screen 
of  leaves.  In  a  tree  with  thick  and  heavy  leaves,  this  interior  shadow 
will  be  dark ;  in  a  tree  with  thin  and  translucent  leaves,  the  inner  part 
of  the  foliage  mass  may  be  full  of  green  light.  If  the  leaves  of  the  tree 
be  of  different  colors  on  the  two  sides,  the  color  of  the  whole  tree  at  a 
distance  will  be  to  some  extent  a  combination  of  these  two  colors, 
shifting  in  amount  according  to  the  point  of  view  and  the  play  of  the 
wind.  If  a  tree  has  glossy  leaves,  the  side  of  its  foliage  mass  towards  the 
sun  will  be  sprinkled  with  brilliant  points  of  yellowish  white  light,  and 
even  in  the  shade  its  leaves  will  reflect  the  light  of  the  sky  and  give 
airiness  and  brilliance  to  a  color  that  might  otherwise  be  hea\-y.  It 
might  be  regarded  as  a  fortunate  fact  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
designer  that  in  so  many  cases  heavy  and  dark-green  leaves  have  this 
glossiness  of  surface. 

Within  the  range  of  green  color  of  foliage,  from  the  white  green  of  Range  of 
silver  thorn  and  the  yellow  green  of  golden  elder  to  the  deep  blue  green  ^°|^^^' 
of  white  pine  or  the  red  green  of  red  cedar,  there  is  as  great  a  variety 
as  an  artist  could  obtain  on  his  palette  within  the  bounds  of  one  color. 
In  addition  to  this  we  have  the  trees  and  shrubs  with  foliage  which  is, 
in  effect,  of  another  color  than  green,  like  the  purple  beech,  the  red 
Japanese  maple,  the  gray  variegated  euonymus,  and  the  still  more 
striking  appearance  of  the  plants  with  particolored  foliage  like  coleus. 
Besides  all  this  we  have  the  delicate  and  misty  shades  of  silver  and 
rose  and  gold  which  clothe  our  deciduous  trees  in  early  spring,  and  the 
fiery  red  and  orange  and  yellow  and  the  more  sober  dun  and  buff  and 
bronze  and  brown  of  our  autumnal  foliage. 

In  his  larger  compositions  in  color  of  foliage  mass,  the  designer  is  Restricted 
usually  endeavoring  to  make  his  work  harmonious  with  the  surrounding  (-gj^°^^  ,^^^' 
landscape.     He  is  most  often  trying  to  make  a  composition  which  Green 


i6o 


Effects  of 

Foliage 

Color 


Contrast  of 
Color  in 
Differentiation 
of  Units  in 
Design 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

shall  be  restful  and  peaceful  in  its  effect  on  the  beholder;  frequently 
indeed,  he  is  concerned  to  make  his  planting  look  as  much  as  may  be 
like  the  undisturbed  work  of  nature.  All  these  large  considerations 
should  make  him  in  his  choice  of  summer  foliage  very  chary  of  departing 
far  from  his  gamut  of  greens.  In  a  formal  planting,  in  an  obviously 
artificial  inclosed  shrub  garden,  it  may  be  legitimate  and  desirable  to 
deal  in  golden  and  purple  and  silver  summer  foliage,  but  in  the  wider 
landscape  such  foliage,  except  for  a  small  and  carefully  chosen  spot  of 
brilliance  which  accents  a  point  in  the  composition,  is  likely  to  prove  an 
incongruity. 

Within  his  range  of  greens,  however,  the  designer  has  a  very  powerful 
means  of  accomplishing  the  effects  which  he  may  desire.  The  heavier 
darker  colors  give  a  plant  a  certain  effect  of  solidity  and  weight  which 
enables  it,  as  would  striking  form  or  close  texture,  to  strengthen  a 
projection  in  a  naturalistic  plantation,  or  to  mark  a  designated  point 
in  a  formal  composition.  The  darker  colors,  particularly  of  course 
those  of  evergreens,  will  tend  to  give  an  effect  of  soberness,  solemnity, 
or  even  gloom  to  a  considerable  plantation  of  such  trees,  while,  on  the 
other  hand,  the  gayety  of  a  sunny  glade  would  be  much  enhanced  if 
the  sunlight  fell  on  the  foliage  of  some  tree  of  a  light  and  sparkling 

green. 

A  judicious  contrast  of  dark  green  against  light  green  or  of  a  warm 
green  against  a  cold  one  will  enhance  the  apparent  effect  of  both  colors 
and  differentiate  the  foliage  masses.  A  promontory  of  foliage  will  be 
relieved  against  the  background  of  planting  behind  it  and  given  more 
definiteness  and  force  in  the  design  if  it  tells  for  instance  as  a  yellow- 
green  mass  against  distant  foliage  of  gray  green.  The  same  thing  is, 
of  course,  true  of  contrast  of  foliage  with  the  brown  of  plowed  ground, 
or  contrast  with  the  purples  and  grays  of  rock.  The  possibility  of 
choice  of  color  In  this  way  gives  the  designer  an  effective  means  of 
unifying  areas  and  masses  within  his  design  and  of  contrasting  one  mass 
with  another.  He  can  thus  make  plain  the  composition  which  he  has 
in  mind,  avoiding,  on  the  one  hand,  a  deadly  sameness  of  color  in  which 
the  different  units  of  his  composition  can  hardly  be  distinguished,  and, 
on  the  other  hand,  a  restless  diversity  of  color-units  so  small  that  they 
produce  merely  confusion  and  monotony  of  another  kind. 


PLANTING    DESIGN i6i 

In  large-scale  design,  color  may  be  used,  within  reasonable  limits,  to  Foliage  Color 
enhance  the  effects  of  aerial  perspective  and  to  give  to  the  more  distant   ^     ^"''5^ 
foliage  a  still  greater  effect  of  distance.     For  this  result,  plants  of  a 
deeper  or  warmer  green  would  be  placed  nearer  the  observer ;  and  from 
these  the  color  might  range  through  various  tones  to  distant  foliage  of  a 
light  and  bluish  hue. 

Where  there  is  no  necessity  for  similarity  with  the  foliage  natural  Useof'Col- 
to  the  region,  where  the  design  is  avowedly  man-made,  the  brilliant  and  °''^'^  '  fol^<^S' 
somewhat  abnormal  appearance  of  the  purples  and  reds  and  yellows  of 
so-called  "colored"  foliage  may  be  desirable.  These  brilliant  colors 
however  are  usually  best  given  value  and  effect,  as  the  colors  of  flowers 
are,  by  being  set  off  against  more  usual  and  restful  shades.  Colored 
foliage,  then,  is  likely  to  be  best  used  either  in  beds  enframed  and  backed, 
or  as  individual  specimens  strongly  marking  a  definite  point,  or  as  a 
culminating  spot  of  color  giving  a  final  sparkle  to  a  mass  of  similar  but 
more  subdued  hues.  Colored  foliage  in  herbaceous  plants  is  sometimes 
desirable  on  account  of  the  definiteness  of  the  shapes  which  can  be  made 
from  it,  and  the  length  of  time  for  which  it  can  be  depended  on  to  give 
its  effect.  Some  varieties  of  it,  however,  are  undesirable,  for  their 
color  comes  as  near  to  being  of  itself  unpleasing,  as  it  is  possible  for 
any  color  to  be. 

In  our  autumn,  in  regions  of  deciduous  trees,  the  palette  of  color  Autumn 
in  the  hands  of  the  landscape  designer  is  one  of  almost  the  maximum  of  ^°^'^'^S,' 
brilliance,  and  he  need  not  hold  his  hand  from  the  most  gorgeous  effects 
which  his  imagination  can  conceive,  because  such  effects  are  natural 
and  common  in  the  whole  landscape.  Even  here,  however,  the  greatest 
effect  of  brilliance  is  given  by  some  contrast  with  a  soberer  hue :  the 
red  maple  in  the  autumn  is  the  more  striking  for  the  green  of  the 
surrounding  swamp  oak  and  alder;  the  clear  gold  of  a  black  birch  is  at 
its  best  against  the  deep  green  of  a  pine  wood.  In  general  it  is  well  so 
to  arrange  the  trees  and  shrubs  that  the  most  glowing  autumnal  colors 
shall  be  enframed  and  made  the  most  of,  each  as  the  heart  of  its  own 
composition ;  and  as  the  season  proceeds  and  different  trees  in  turn 
take  on  their  brilliant  color  and  their  importance  in  the  scene,  these 
dominant  spots  of  color  may  change  from  the  scarlet  of  the  first  red 
maple  through  the  pure  yellow  of  the  birches  to  the  ruby,  orange,  and 


l62 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Winter  Color, 
Bark,  and 

Fruit 


Color  of 
Flower 


Practical 
Difficulties  of 
Design  in 
Flower  Color 


vermilion  of  the  other  maples,  the  purple  of  the  red  and  scarlet  oak,  and 
finally  to  the  brown  and  buff  of  the  persistent  leaves  of  the  white  oak 
and  beech. 

Even  when  their  foliage  is  gone,  the  color  possibilities  of  deciduous 
plants  are  not  at  an  end.  There  are  many  rich  and  velvety  textures  of 
gray  and  brown  and  purple  in  the  twigs  in  a  mass  of  shrubbery,  or  in  a 
more  distant  grove  of  trees.  Properly  grouped,  properly  set  off,  the 
grayish  yellow  of  Lombardy  poplar,  the  deep  black-brown  of  Japanese 
barberry,  are  surprisingly  vivid  and  well  worth  attention  in  composition, 
and  not  least  of  such  colors  are  the  yellows  and  browns  of  open  grass- 
land and  marsh.  Besides  these  colors  we  have  the  more  exotic  eflFect  of 
shrubs  with  brilliant  red  and  yellow  bark.  In  the  planting  more  closely 
about  our  houses  such  shrubs  give  a  bright  color  when  such  colors  in 
plants  are  few,  and  add  a  warmth  and  interest  to  leafless  plantations. 
Their  value  lies,  however,  largely  in  their  contrast  with  their  surround- 
ings, and  it  is  possible  to  spoil  this  effect  by  too  wide-spread  planting 
of  such  material. 

The  brilliant  berries  which  are  borne  by  shrubs  like  winterberry, 
high-bush  cranberry,  Japanese  barberry  give  a  pleasant  touch  of  color 
after  the  leaves  have  fallen,  although  only  in  the  case  of  a  few  shrubs 
do  the  berries  persist  throughout  the  winter.  This  color  is  rarely  so 
intense  in  large  masses  as  to  be  a  dominant  feature  in  the  scene,  and 
usually  the  various  berry-bearing  shrubs  are  used  no  more  for  their 
color  than  for  the  general  interest  they  give  to  the  design  and  for  their 
value  in  attracting  birds. 

In  flowering  shrubs  and  particularly  in  flowering  herbaceous  plants, 
the  landscape  designer  has  his  greatest  opportunity  in  the  use  of  color. 
In  these  materials  he  finds  as  wide  a  color  range  as  the  painter  has ; 
indeed  in  some  ways  a  wider  range,  for  he  may  use  on  the  one  hand  a 
pure  white  lily  or  a  crimson  cardinal  flower  or  a  flame  azalea  in 
sunshine,  and  on  the  other  the  deep  blue  larkspur  or  monkshood  in 
heavy  shade. 

Unlike  the  painter,  the  landscape  architect  usually  cannot  look  at 
the  colors  which  he  is  to  use  before  he  puts  them  into  his  picture,  and 
rearrange  or  modify  them  as  his  sense  of  color  harmony  dictates.  He 
must  order  his  plants  from  a  nursery  or  raise  them  from  seed  with  no 


PLANTING    DESIGN  163 

guide  as  to  their  color  except  his  general  knowledge  of  what  color  of 
flower  a  certain  plant  should  bear,  and  he  must  arrange  his  plants  in 
his  design  before  they  bloom,  with  only  his  general  knowledge  to  tell  him 
whether  or  not  the  resulting  colors  will  be  harmonious.  There  are 
various  schemes  of  color  nomenclature  *  which  are  known  to  persons 
interested  in  this  subject,  but  no  scheme  has  attained  anything  like 
general  acceptance,  and  it  is  still  impossible  surely  to  designate  a  color 
by  a  name,  and  therefore  doubly  impossible  to  order  from  a  nursery  a 
plant  that  will  certainly  have  a  flower  of  a  definite  color.  It  thus  comes 
about  that  the  landscape  designer  finds  himself  learning  from  experience 
what  plants  are  harmonious  in  their  color  of  flower,  what  combinations 
of  plants  may  be  made  to  produce  various  color  effects,  and  then  design- 
ing in  terms  of  this  accumulated  practical  oxperience  rather  than  in 
terms  of  absolute  color. 

Bad  combinations  of  colors  in  flowering  plants,  though  they  may  Circumstancfs 
occur  and  may  be  very  distressing,  are  not  particularly  difficult  to  avoid,  ^f '^'""'^""^j 
In  the  first  place,  the  plants  in  the  same  area  in  a  garden  are  likely  to 
be  all  at  the  same  time  bathed  in  sun  or  overlaid  with  shade,  and  so  their 
colors  may  be  harmonized  much  as  those  of  a  water-color  drawing  may 
be  by  a  wash  of  one  color  over  the  whole.  Moreover  the  color  masses 
of  the  flowers  are  not  contiguous  :  their  color  is,  as  it  were,  diluted  by 
masses  of  foliage  and  by  patches  of  darkness  where  the  shady  interior 
of  the  plant  is  seen  beneath  its  surface.  Again,  white  flowers  are  har- 
monious with  flowers  of  any  other  color,  and  the  designer  may  avoid 
doubtful  combinations  by  interposing  white  flowers  between  the  masses 
of  possibly  incongruous  hue.  Where  flower  colors  are  intended  to  be 
seen  from  a  considerable  distance,  more  brilliant  colors,  like  coarser 
textures,  may  be  used  to  advantage,  and  color  contrasts  may  be  eflfective 
under  such  circumstances,  which  would  be  harsh  if  they  were  seen  near 
at  hand  in  a  small-scale  design. 

In  using  flowering  plants   in  a   landscape  composition,   the   large  Mass  Relation 
relation  of  each  mass  of  flower  to  the  whole  scene  m.ust  be  remembered.  ^q^iJ^'^ 
It  is  possible  to  clarify  and  accent  the  whole  design  of  a  garden  by  a 
proper  choice  of  the  flower  colors  of  the  beds ;   on  the  other  hand,  it  is 
possible  by  the  use  of  too  small  and  too  varied  color  masses,  to  produce 

♦  For  instance,  A  Color  Notation,  by  A.  H.  Munsell.     3d  revised  edition,  191 3. 


164 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Plant 
Character 


Species  and 
Character 


a  peculiarly  unpleasant  kind  of  monotonous  confusion.*  Similarly  in 
the  case  of  early  spring  flowering  shrubs,  it  is  well  to  arrange  them 
in  sufficiently  large  groups  so  that  they  may  be  noticeable  from 
a  distance  and  that  the  individual  flowers  may  blend  in  a  considerable 
mass  of  color.  The  effect  of  bright  color  of  flower  may  be  obtained  quite 
as  much  by  a  close  massing  of  the  flowers  as  by  their  individual  bright 
color.  A  plant  which  bears  a  profusion  of  flowers  all  at  the  same  height 
and  concealing  the  foliage,  like  some  of  the  dwarf  marigolds,  or  moss 
pink,  or  cineraria  will  be  very  striking  on  this  account.  Where  it  is 
desirable  that  certain  portions  of  a  flower-planting  be  brought  out 
in  sunshine  against  others  in  shade,  this  effect  may  be  accented  by  using 
yellow  and  red  flowers  in  the  sun,  but  purple  and  blue  flowers  in  the 
shade.  Almost  the  maximum  possible  contrasts  of  color  and  value 
may  be  so  produced,  f 

Plants  are  recognized  as  different  in  species  according  to  the  inherent 
tendency  each  has  under  all  circumstances  to  have  certain  characteristics 
of  parts  and  to  have  those  parts  arranged  in  a  certain  way.  This  is 
true  not  only  of  the  arrangements  of  flower  and  seed  which  mean  so 
much  to  the  systematic  botanist,  but  also  of  the  larger  physical  rela- 
tions of  more  immediate  esthetic  importance,  for  instance,  the  growth 
of  the  trunk  of  a  tree,  the  arrangement  and  set  of  its  branches,  the 
grouping  of  its  boughs  and  leaves.  In  many  cases  this  racial  trait  will 
manifest  itself  in  a  typical  shape  by  which  any  individual  of  the  species 
may  be  known;  in  other  cases  the  typical  shape  may  be  departed 
from  owing  to  individual  circumstances,  but  there  still  remains  the 
general  character,  which  has  on  the  observer  a  more  or  less  definite 

*  "Variety,  of  which  the  true  end  is  to  relieve  the  eye,  not  to  perplex  it,  does  not 
consist  in  the  diversity  of  separate  objects,  but  in  that  of  their  effects  when  combined 
together;  in  diversity  of  composition,  and  of  character.  Many  think,  however,  they 
have  obtained  that  grand  object,  when  they  have  exhibited  in  one  body  all  the  hard 
names  of  the  Linnaean  system ;  but  when  as  many  different  plants  as  can  well  be  got 
together,  are  exhibited  in  every  shrubbery,  or  in  every  plantation,  the  result  is  a  same- 
ness of  a  different  kind,  but  not  less  truly  a  sameness,  than  would  arise  from  there 
being  no  diversity  at  all ;  for  there  is  no  having  variety  of  character,  without  a  certain 
distinctness,  without  certain  marked  features  on  which  the  eye  can  dwell." 

Price,  Essays  on  the  Picturesque,  1810,  v.  i,  p.  286-287. 

t  Cf.  Flower  beds,  p.  176  ff. 


PLANTING    DESIGN 165 

effect.  In  some  instances  the  designer  is  obliged  to  make  his  composi- 
tions in  terms  of  these  characters  and  their  resultant  effects,  since  he 
is  unable  accurately  to  predict  the  shapes  to  which  the  plants  he  uses 
will  attain. 

The  character  of  an  individual  plant  is  the  result  of  two  factors  :  Individual 

its   species,  —  what  we  mi^ht  call  its  inheritance,  its  racial  tendency  ■^(^"' 

,1  .     .        .r   .  ,     .  .  "     Character 

to  assume  certam  typical  characteristics  11  it  succeeds  in  growing  at 

all,  —  and  its  environment,  —  the  soil   and   moisture  conditions,  the 

climate  and  air  conditions,  the  wind,  sun,  and  exposure.     Its  character 

is  the  summation  of  all  its  characteristics,  —  the  expression  in  the  plant's 

form  of  all  the  forces  subject  to  which  it  has  grown,  both  those  of  its 

own  cell-changes  and  those  of  its  external  surroundings.     (See   Plates 

7,  12,  20,  25,  31,  and  35.) 

Plants  from  the  same  environment  often  are  in  some  ways  similar  Character  and 
in  appearance.  In  some  cases,  this  is  very  obvious,  for  instance,  the  Environment 
heavy  and  stunted  form,  the  small  amount  of  evaporating  surface 
found  in  many  desert  plants,  or  the  flat  floating  leaves  of  many  varieties 
of  water  plants.  Plants  found  originally  in  the  same  environment 
are  likely  to  go  well  together  as  elements  in  planting  design,  sometimes 
because  of  this  similarity  of  form,  always  for  the  practical  reason  that 
their  similar  original  environment  has  made  them  require  similar  cultural 
conditions,  and  also  for  the  associational  reason  that  we  are  accustomed 
to  seeing  these  plants  together  in  their  native  haunts. 

If  we  intend  to  enhance,  suggest,  or  reproduce  the  character  of  some  Relation  of 
native  piece  of  landscape,  we  shall  naturally  tend  to  confine  ourselves  •^'''"'  Char- 
in  our  planting  to  native  plant  materials,  both  for  horticultural  reasons  Landscape 
and  for  reasons  of  association,  as  has  been  said.     If  however  we  are  Character 
concerned  only  with  the  compositional  relations  in  our  design,  there  is 
no  sufficient  reason  why  we  should  confine  our  effects  to  those  which 
can  be  produced  with  native  materials  alone,  when  we  have  at  hand  a 
much  wider  range  of  effects,  through  the  use  of  plant  material  originating 
elsewhere  but  still  congruous  and  perfectly  hardy  at  the  place  of  our 
design. 

On  a  Cape  Cod  seashore,  bayberry,  sweet  fern,  bearberry,  red  cedar, 
dwarf  wild  rose,  and  beach  goldenrod  are  native,  hardy,  and  good  in 
combination,    but   Norway   pine,   Japanese   barberry,    Ramanas   rose, 


i66 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

Chinese  privet  would  be  equally  hardy  in  the  same  place,  though  all  of 
them  are  foreign  to  this  country.  If  however  we  desired  to  emphasize 
the  Cape  Cod  character  of  our  piece  of  design,  we  should  use  only 
native  plants,  producing  a  composition  perhaps  less  decorative  but  more 
congruous  with  its  surroundings  in  association. 

Within  reasonable  limits  the  character  of  a  scene  may  be  enhanced 
by  an  exaggeration  of  the  appropriate  character  in  the  vegetation.  The 
summit  of  a  low  hill,  for  instance,  may  be  made  more  effective  by  en- 
couraging upon  it  the  growth  of  those  plants  only  which  grow  naturally 
upon  high  places  and  perhaps  upon  places  higher  than  that  in  question. 
An  artificial  naturalistic  pool  will  hardly  produce  its  full  effect  unless 
growing  in  it  and  upon  its  shores  are  plants  which  naturally  haunt  wet 
places,  and  which  bring  to  the  mind  of  the  observer  natural  pools  which 
he  has  seen  elsewhere.  A  design  in  which  rocks  or  ledges  are  used  in  a 
naturalistic  way  is  not  likely  to  be  successful  unless  among  the  rocks 
are  made  to  grow  such  plants  as  in  nature  frequent  rocky  places,  though 
smaller  plants  perhaps  might  be  used  to  increase  the  apparent  size  of 
the  ledge,  or  more  delicate  plants  to  enhance  by  contrast  the  effect  of  a 
projecting  bowlder. 
"Expression"  We  feel  the  total  effect  of  a  tree  as  being  the  expression  of  a  character, 

ana  i^naraaer  ai^iost  of  a  personality,  in  a  similar  way  to  that  in  which  we  feel  an  effect 
of  character  in  a  large  landscape,  but  often  more  powerfully  in  the  case 
of  a  tree,  since  the  tree  is  more  simply  organized  and  more  readily 
personified.  The  sturdy  oak,  the  weeping  willow,  the  mournful 
cypress,  are  the  ordinary  examples  of  this  personified  effect  in  trees, 
and  they  may  properly  be  used  in  landscape  compositions  for  this 
effect.  There  is  certainly  something  in  the  darkness  and  the  rigidity 
of  the  cypress  that  suggests  dignified  sorrow ;  there  is  something  in  the 
ruggedness  of  a  white  oak,  something  in  the  uncompromising  horizon- 
tality  of  its  branches,  that  suggests  strength ;  there  is  something  in 
the  drooping  attitude  of  a  weeping  willow  that  suggests  the  posture  of 
a  person  bowed  in  grief. 
Association  and  Apart  from  all  this,  there  is  the  matter  of  association.  These  trees 
ym  0  ism  have  been  associated  in  our  minds  with  these  effects  so  frequently  in 

literature,  that  it  is  hardly  possible  for  us  to  think  of  the  cypress  without 
thinking  of  it  as  the  "funereal"  cypress.     In  fact,  these  and  other  trees 


PLANTING    DESIGN ibj 

have  come  to  have  a  symbolic  function  in  planting  *  almost  as  definite 
as  that  of  the  symbolic  decorations  of  a  church.  This  symbolism  has 
been  carried  to  a  much  greater  elaborateness  in  the  case  of  flowers  than 
in  the  case  of  trees  :  we  all  know  the  modest  violet,  the  pure  lily, 
—  indeed  there  is  a  whole  language  of  flowers,  and  it  might  be  very 
interesting  as  a  play  of  fancy  to  design  a  flower  garden  in  these  symbolic 
terms. 

The  plants  used  in  a  landscape  composition  must  be  considered  by  Plantations 
the  designer  in  different  aspects  according  as  they  form  a  wall  or  screen 
or  edging,  separating  one  scene  or  one  area  from  another,  or  as  they 
themselves  form  a  number  of  separate  objects  in  an  open  area,  composi- 
tionally  related  one  to  another,  or  as,  growing  comparatively  low,  they 
serve  as  the  surface  decoration  of  the  ground  of  a  unit  in  design. 

The  separating  wall  between  one  open  area  and  another  in  a  scheme  Inclosing 
of  any  size  will  usually  be  formed  largely  of  tree  masses.  If  these  P^^^^^^^ons 
masses  cover  any  considerable  area  they  should  have  their  own  character 
as  seen  from  within,  that  is  they  should  be  subject  to  those  considera- 
tions that  apply  to  a  bosquet  or  a  wood.  Where  they  inclose  a  formal 
area  of  any  kind,  their  edge  will  usually  be  designed  to  parallel  or  accent 
the  boundary  of  this  area,  and  will  be  treated  as  though  the  woods 
were  a  plastic  material  to  be  molded  to  whatever  man-made  form 
might  be  desired  in  accordance  with  the  formal  design.  Where  these 
tree  masses  form  the  boundary  of  an  irregular  open  space,  however,  — 
a  glade,  a  meadow,  even  a  well-kept  and  much-used  lawn,  —  their 
compositional  relations  may  well  be  more  complicated.  The  principles 
of  repetition,  sequence,  and  balance  are  still  to  be  considered,  though 
in  this  case  manifested  in  an  informal  way,  but  besides  these  there 
must  be  taken  into  account  the  feelings  of  the  observer  as  to  what  are 
reasonable  and  natural  relations  of  informal  foliage  masses,  and  these 
feelings  will  probably  be  based  on  relations  which  he  remembers  between 
the  tree  masses  and  open  spaces  which  he  has  seen  in  free  landscape ; 
that  is,  these  informal  designs  will  be  definitely  naturalistic,  or  they  will 
almost  always  have  at  least  some  suggestion  of  being  so.  (See  Plates  6, 
21,  and  33.) 

*  Cf.  The  symbolic  use  of  plants  in  Japanese  and  Moghul  gardens,  and  in  the 
designs  of  the  Romantic  landscape  school. 


i68 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Outline, 
Modeling,  and 
Treatment  of 
Informal 
Inclosing 
Plantations 


When  an  open  area  is  surrounded  by  plantations  of  trees  and  shrubs, 
two  compositions  are  brought  into  being,  from  almost  any  place  from 
which  the  scene  may  be  regarded  :  the  floor  of  the  open  area,  taking  its 
shape  from  the  boundaries  set  for  it  by  the  planting,  and  the  portion 
of  the  planting  facing  the  observer,  with  its  own  subordinate  composition 
and  decoration,  seen  across  the  foreground  of  the  open  floor.  Open 
meadows,  lawns,  and  glades  in  parks,  and  similar  areas  on  private 
estates,  are  very  likely  to  be  naturalistic,  or  at  least  informal,  for  such 
reasons  as  economy  of  ground,  relation  to  topography,  suggestion  of  the 
freedom  of  the  country,  and  harmony  with  such  outside  landscape, 
usually  informal,  as  is  included  in  views  from  the  open  space.  The 
shape  of  the  inclosed  area  therefore  will  usually  be  irregular.  It  will  be 
desirable  to  obtain  both  the  maximum  effect  of  extent  and,  consistently 
with  this,  the  maximum  intricacy  and  interest. 

Usually,  therefore,  the  inclosing  plantation  will  be  modeled  into 
bays,  promontories,  and  perhaps  islands,  which  create  a  series  of 
minor  compositions  both  of  the  open  floor  and  of  the  inclosing  foliage 
wall.  It  is  commonly  well  to  arrange  some  of  the  bays  so  that  a  por- 
tion of  their  nearest  side  is  invisible  to  the  spectator  enjoying  the  par- 
ticularly designed  composition.  This  adds  an  element  of  mystery 
and  uncertainty,  and  if  rightly  done  need  not  destroy  the  unity 
of  the  main  open  space.  When  the  spectator  is  looking  directly  into  a 
bay,  the  composition  normally  becomes  one  with  a  mass  on  each  side, 
directing  the  attention  to  an  area  of  interest  in  the  middle.  The  natural 
treatment,  therefore,  under  these  circumstances  is  to  make  the  enframing 
promontories  heavy,  strong,  large,  perhaps  interesting  in  shape,  and  to 
make  the  planting  of  the  inclosed  bay  interesting  in  color  and  in  texture, 
but  not  dominant  in  height  for  fear  of  upsetting  the  unity  of  the  form 
composition  of  the  whole  bay.  This  is  the  reason  why  flower  borders 
around  a  lawn  are  commonly  more  effective  in  the  bays  and  not  on  the 
points  of  the  planting.  It  may  be  that  in  a  composition  seen  from 
some  other  point  of  view  the  projecting  promontory  or  a  free-standing 
island  is  designed  to  be  the  important  object.  In  this  case  the  composi- 
tion from  this  point  of  view  must  be  defined,  probably  enframed  either 
by  objects  near  the  observer  such  as  overarching  trees  which  restrain 
the  vision  to  right  and  left,  or  by  similar  objects,  such  as  larger  points  or 


PLANTING    DESIGN 169 

islands,  deeper  in  the  view,  which  concentrate  the  attention  on  the 
main  object,  while  themselves  forming  a  subordinate  part  of  the  same 
view. 

It  is,  as  we  have  seen,  possible  to  secure  strength  of  one  part  of  an 
enframing  plantation  by  its  size,  density,  and  individuality  of  form. 
Too  great  emphasis  of  these  characteristics  will,  however,  spoil  the  form 
unity  of  the  total  enframing  mass.  Too  close  an  intermingling  of  tall 
plant  forms  with  low  ones,  rounded  shapes  with  pointed  ones,  evergreen 
plants  with  deciduous,  will  produce  an  unpleasant  restlessness.  In  a 
general  way  it  is  true  that  the  promontories  in  such  plantations  as  we 
are  discussing  should  be  high,  abrupt  at  the  end,  perhaps  accented 
with  a  few  aspiring  or  especially  individual  forms ;  the  plants  forming 
the  bays  should  be  lower,  and  should  rise  more  gradualh'  from  the  open 
to  the  higher  background  behind  them.  It  is  almost  never  desirable  to 
have  a  low  mass  pocketed  behind  a  higher  one,  but  specimen  trees, 
individual  masses,  may  of  course  rise  to  a  greater  height  from  the  lawn 
or  from  lower  foliage. 

The  long  axis  of  the  promontories  may  often  with  advantage  be  at 
right  angles  to  the  principal  views,  and  the  promontories  may  be  no 
thicker  than  is  necessary  to  make  them  satisfactory  screens,  and  good 
forms  in  the  general  design.  Such  an  arrangement  of  foliage,  in  effect 
like  the  wings  and  scenery  of  a  stage,  will  give  the  maximum  open  area 
together  with  the  maximum  of  interest  of  subordinate  compositions.  As 
they  are  foreshortened,  each  on  the  one  behind  it,  color  and  texture 
diiferences  of  promontories  will  tend  to  accent  the  diversification  of  the 
outline  of  the  open  space.  As  the  separate  bays  tend  to  tell  as  separate 
compositional  units  when  looked  into,  for  the  sake  of  variety  they  may 
be  different  and  each  may  have  a  distinctive  characteristic.  These 
characteristics  may  change  with  the  seasonal  variation  of  vegetation, 
offering  first  flowering  shrubs,  then  colored  fruit,  then  autumn  foliage, 
and  so  on.  It  is  much  easier  to  have  these  different  effects  follow  each 
other  in  the  same  dominant  location,  thus  getting  a  series  of  different 
pictures  in  the  same  enframement.  It  is  possible,  however,  to  have, 
for  instance,  first  a  promontory  and  then  a  bay  assume  dominance  as 
different  plants  come  into  flower  or  put  on  their  autumn  color.  This  is 
more  difficult  because  it  requires  that  the  designer  shall  arrange  that 


1 7© 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


an  object  be  dominant  in  one  composition  but  also  at  another  time 
subordinate  in  anotiier. 

Besides  their  service  as  adding  interest  to  the  composition  as  seen 
from  within,  these  inclosing  plantations,  like  other  plantations,  may 
serve  to  exclude  from  the  composition  some  incongruous  object  which  is 
without,  and  many  designs  must  be  made  with  screen  plantations  which 
have  their  shape  and  location  determined  in  this  way,  or  by  their  service 
as  a  windbreak,  or  as  a  mass  seen  from  a  distance  in  some  other  scene. 
Once  accepted  as  necessary  parts  of  a  design,  however,  such  plantations 
should  be  so  treated  as  to  bear  their  part  in  every  important  composition 
in  which  they  appear. 
Hedges  A  hedge  is  a  foliage  wall  which,  being  parallel-sided,  expresses  on  the 

outside  the  form  it  incloses  within.  (See  Drawing  XX,  opp.  p.  158.)  A 
hedge  may  be  very  rough  in  texture,  being  little  more  than  a  somewhat 
formalized  line  of  trees  and  shrubs,  or  it  may  be  carefully  aligned,  trimly 
clipped,  decorated  with  niches  for  statues,  perhaps  paneled  between 
stone  posts ;  treated,  that  is,  as  far  as  possible  like  an  architectural 
wall.  The  plants  forming  hedges  impart  but  little  of  their  own  char- 
acter to  the  resulting  structure ;  its  shape  is  that  put  upon  it  by  the 
design  of  the  area  which  it  bounds.  A  similar  effect  to  that  of  a  formal 
hedge  may  be  obtained  by  the  use  of  a  lattice  fence  or  even  a  wall, 
thickly  covered  with  a  close-clinging  vine  like  Boston  ivy.  Such  a 
structure  is  more  quickly  made,  and  takes  less  room  on  the  ground  than  a 
hedge  of  equal  height.  Simply  designed  and  well  vine-covered,  it  may 
tell  only  as  a  foliage  mass  ;  more  commonly,  however,  it  is  merely  deco- 
rated with  vines  and  tells  more  as  an  architectural  object  in  the  design. 
A  formal  row  of  plants  spaced  some  distance  apart  may  be  eifective 
as  a  screen  if  the  line  of  sight  falls  upon  them  at  such  an  angle  that  they 
are  foreshortened  one  upon  another.  When,  from  a  point  of  view  more 
or  less  at  right  angles  to  the  line  of  plants,  the  same  screen  must  be 
open  and  not  continuous,  such  arrangements  of  free-standing  evergreen 
trees,  or  even  of  the  repeated  trunks  of  deciduous  trees,  may  well  meet 
this  double  need.  Similar  arrangements  at  smaller  scale,  of  clipped 
evergreens  or  vine-grown  posts  connected  with  garlands,  not  high  enough 
or  perhaps  not  broad  enough  to  serve  as  a  screen,  are  often  useful  as 
lines  of  demarcation  of  formal  areas. 


PLylNTING    DESIGN 


171 


As  the  two  sides  of  a  hedge  are  parallel,  a  hedge  bounding  a  formal 
area  is  formal  also  on  the  outside.  This  gives  rise  to  a  difficulty  if  the 
area  outside  the  hedge  is  not  intended  to  be  formal,  and  the  hedge  makes 
a  considerable  part  of  its  boundary.  It  becomes  necessary  to  introduce 
informal  planting  outside  the  hedge,  in  spite  of  certain  difficulties  of 
upkeep  which  such  an  arrangement  often  causes,  in  order  to  avoid  what 
would  almost  certainly  be  ugly,  —  a  relatively  small  inclosed  area,  with 
nearly  half  of  its  inclosure  formal  and  the  rest  informal. 

When  hedges  are  low  enough  to  be  readily  seen  over,  their  function  Low  Hedges 
in  design  becomes  somewhat  different.  They  no  longer  bound  and  '^"^  Edgings 
terminate  the  composition,  they  define  and  accentuate  the  boundary 
between  two  masses  within  the  same  view.  (See  Tailpiece  on  p.  23.) 
Both  masses  being  visible  at  the  same  time,  both  forms  must  be  studied 
in  the  composition.  The  low  hedge,  or  at  a  still  smaller  scale  the  edging, 
bounds  not  only  the  flower  bed,  but  also  the  grass-plot  or  path  or  what- 
ever other  area  lies  next  it.  Usually  the  edging  forms  a  part  of  the 
mass  of  the  bed,  but,  being  of  a  closer  texture  and  more  definite  form, 
gives  crispness  and  definition  to  the  bed  outline.  Sometimes  the 
edging  rises  higher  than  the  interior  of  the  bed,  or  is,  by  its  color  or 
density,  much  more  conspicuous  than  the  material  of  the  bed,  so  that 
the  edging  takes  on  itself  a  more  individual  function  as  a  linear  unit 
in  the  design.  Sometimes  the  edging  is  so  low  —  as,  for  instance,  a 
grass  edging  —  that  it  hardly  tells  as  a  part  of  the  planting  of  the  bed, 
but  rather  as  a  definite  boundary-  to  the  cultivated  soil  within  it.  A 
conspicuous  formal  edging  may  sufficiently  formalize  a  bed,  the  other 
plants  in  which  are  loose  in  texture  and  various  in  form  or  color;  but 
close  texture  and  continuity  of  material  are  seldom  desirable  in  an 
edging  about  an  informal  mass,  and  almost  never  so  if  there  is  any 
naturalistic  feeling  in  the  design,  as  witness  the  unfortunate  treatment 
in  some  of  the  French  parks,  where  a  naturalistic  shrub  and  tree  group 
is  strangled  with  a  rope  of  geraniums. 

A  single  foliage  mass,  if  it  is  to  stand  as  an  independent  unit  in  a  Specimen 
landscape  scene,  must  have  of  itself  unity  and  individuality  to  make  it  Tr"s  <ind 
worthy  of  its  place  in  the  composition.     Such  individuality  may  be 
attained  by  a  mass  or  close  group  of  plants,  as  in  the  case  of  some  shrub 
masses,  tree  groups,  and  notably  flower  beds,  but  it  is  usually  more 


172 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

completely  expressed  by  an  individual  plant,  tree,  or  shrub  or  flowering 
plant  as  the  case  may  be.  Striking  color  may  serve  this  purpose,  for 
example  a  purple  beech,  a  golden  retinispora,  or  an  orange  mass  of 
autumn  helenium  in  flower;  of  itself,  but  also  particularly  in  connec- 
tion with  striking  form,  a  close  and  definite  texture  will  serve,  as  for 
example  a  clipped  privet  or  a  tree  with  naturally  close-growing  foliage 
like  a  red  cedar ;  but  most  important  of  the  characteristics  which  give 
individuality  to  plants  used  in  this  way  is  shape.  This  individualizing 
shape  may  be  merely  a  simple  and  definite  shape  easily  recognized. 
This  may  be  natural  to  the  plant,  like  the  broad-based  conical  shape 
of  a  blue  spruce,  the  rounded  cone  of  an  arbor  vitse,  the  shaft  of  an 
Irish  juniper,  or  the  spire  of  a  Lombardy  poplar.  Or  the  definite  shape 
may  be  imposed  by  clipping  or  training,  making  the  plant  in  effect  an 
architectural  or  sculptural  object  like  a  vase  or  a  statue,  such  an  object 
as  the  trimmed  evergreen  pyramids  or  topiary  peacocks  of  English 
gardens,  or  the  standard  catalpa  or  standard  weeping  elm  more  com- 
monly obtainable  from  American  nurserymen.  Other  definite  and 
man-made  foliage  forms  may  be  produced  by  growing  vines  on  various 
small  free-standing  shapes  of  lattice  or  post,  such  objects  as  for  instance 
a  rose-wreathed  pole  crowned  by  a  bird-house,  or  a  trellis  of  any  des- 
ignated shape,  perhaps  standing  free,  though  more  often  backed  by  a 
wall  and  covered  with  a  flowering  vine.  On  the  other  hand,  this  in- 
dividualizing form  may  be  the  expression  of  the  character  of  the  plant, 
perhaps  of  its  past  history  and  associations,  —  as  the  gnarled  growth  of 
an  old  apple  tree,  the  picturesque  attitude  of  a  wind-blown  cedar, 
or  the  aspiring  growth  of  a  tall  mullein  ;  or  this  natural  expression 
may  be  enhanced  and  guided  by  the  hand  of  man,  as  in  the  trained 
maples  and  evergreens  of  Japan. 

A  "specimen"  tree  or  shrub,  then,  is  properly  one  which  has  enough 
interesting  characteristics  to  make  it  repay  the  attention  which  its 
isolated  situation  inevitably  brings  upon  it.  Specimens  however 
should  not  be  treated  in  landscape  design,  except  perhaps  rarely  in 
arboretums,  merely  as  interesting  objects  in  a  museum  :  they  should 
bear  their  share  in  the  esthetic  organization  of  the  whole  composition. 
(See  the  specimen  evergreen  in  Plate  28.)  A  specimen  may  be  so  fine 
a  thing  that  it  is  worthy  of  a  dominant  position  to  which  all  else  in 


PLANTING    DESIGN 173 

the  scene  is  subordinate,  like  the  centuries-old  flowering  cherry  tree  in 
the  court  of  a  Japanese  temple.  A  similar  composition  might  ex- 
ceptionally be  made  of  a  magnificent  group  of  flowering  shrubs,  a 
fine  old  oak  tree,  a  weeping  mulberry  made  into  a  summer  house, 
standing  in  the  midst  of  a  small  lawn,  protected,  and  enframed  by 
the  boundary  plantations.  But  so  great  dominance  as  this  in  com- 
position is  rarely  assumed  by  a  plant  form.  Specimen  trees  or  shrubs 
in  formal  compositions  are  more  commonly  well  used  ranged  in  rows 
along  a  walk  or  road,  standing  sentinel  on  each  side  of  a  garden 
gate  or  an  entrance  walk,  or  giving  strength  and  definiteness  to  the 
corner  of  a  bed.  In  informal  or  naturalistic  compositions,  specimens 
may  stand  free  just  off  a  promontory  of  a  border  plantation  or  they 
may  arise  singly  or  in  groups  from  a  projection  of  the  planting  which 
must  be  emphasized  or  from  an  area  of  planting  which  must  be  diversi- 
fied. In  any  case,  whether  in  formal  or  non-formal  design,  their  func- 
tion is  to  draw  attention  to  themselves  and  so  to  the  place  where  they 
are,  and  they  should  be  such  and  so  situated  that  this  attraction  of 
attention  makes  for  harmony  and  not  for  restlessness  in  the  whole 
composition.     (See  Plate  6.) 

Isolated  groups  of  trees,  shrubs,  or  herbaceous  plants  should  be  Tree  and 
influenced  in  their  position  in  the  scene  by  the  same  general  composi-  ^^"""^  Groups 
tional  considerations  which  we  have  just  discussed  in  relation  to  speci- 
men trees,  but  the  group  will  have  less  individuality  than  the  specimen, 
it  will  be  larger  on  plan  in  proportion  to  its  height,  it  can  less  afford  to  be 
very  different  in  appearance  from  the  rest  of  the  composition,  and  it  will 
therefore  be  found  more  often  closely  related  to  other  groups  and  to  the 
boundary  masses,  and  playing  a  less  individually  dominant  part  in  the 
composition.  One  reason  for  so  much  of  the  ugliness  of  "Capability" 
Brown's  "clumps,"  was  the  fact  that,  occupying  important  situations, 
they  did  not  have  sufficient  individuality  of  form  to  be  worthy  of  their 
place.* 

In  naturalistic  plantings,  equally  important  with  the  considerations 
of  pure  composition  is  the  consideration  of  natural  relation  of  the  speci- 

*  "We  have,  indeed,  made  but  a  poor  progress,  by  changing  the  formal,  but  sim- 
ple and  majestic  avenue,  for  the  thin  circular  verge  called  a  belt ;  and  the  unpretending 
ugliness  of  the  strait,  for  the  affected  sameness  of  the  serpentine  canal :   but  the  great 


174  LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

men  or  the  group  to  the  other  plants  in  the  scene.  The  springing  up 
of  young  trees  from  wind-blown  seeds  of  a  parent  tree,  the  transporta- 
tion of  fruits  by  birds,  of  nuts  by  squirrels,  to  shrubberies  or  woods  to 
be  concealed  or  eaten  in  safety,  the  tolerance  of  certain  species  of  plants 
for  the  shade  of  others,  the  similarity  in  soil  requirements  of  certain 
plants,  and  a  thousand  other  combinations  of  circumstances  arising 
in  the  economy  of  nature,  tend  to  make  certain  groupings  of  plants 
repeat  themselves  in  natural  landscape.  While  some  knowledge  of 
the  reasons  for  the  origin  of  these  natural  groupings  is  a  desirable  posses- 
sion for  the  designer,  the  groupings  found  in  nature  are  so  varied,  so 
difficult  in  most  cases  to  trace  to  their  causes,  that  what  the  good  de- 
signer really  uses  in  his  work  is  a  feeling  for  congruities  and  incongruities 
of  natural  plant  arrangement  acquired  through  long  experience,  and 
amounting  in  effect  to  an  instinct  rather  than  to  a  number  of  reasons 
to  be  stated  in  words. 
Composition  The  interest  and  value  which  a  group  of  trees  or  shrubs  may  have 

of  Groups  jj^  ^  landscape  will  depend  largely  on  the  compositional  relation  of  the 

individuals  which  make  up  the  group.  The  main  form  of  the  group 
may  well  be  decided  by  its  relation  to  the  whole  scene :  it  may  be 
rounded,  or  aspiring,  or  crouching,  according  to  the  purpose  it  serves 
in  the  total  composition.  But  within  these  limitations  it  is  possible  to 
get  great  diversity  without  destroying  the  unity  of  the  group.  For 
instance,  the  pointed  and  aspiring  forms  of  trees,  particularly  those 
that  are  symmetrically  conical,  will  serve  to  accent  a  portion  of  a  group, 
to  dominate  it,  or  to  crown  its  highest  part,  in  any  case  in  very  sharp 
contrast  to  such  rounded  or  other  less  conspicuous  tree  forms  as  there 
may  be,  but  not  necessarily  destroying  the  mass  unity  of  the  group. 
The  composition  of  any  group  of  plants  will  depend  on  the  point  from 
which  it  is  seen,  and,  except  for  circular  arrangements,  will  be  different 
from  each  different  point  of  view.  As  in  all  his  compositions,  then,  the 
landscape  designer  must  study  his  tree  and  shrub  groups  from  those 
few  points  of  view  which  are  the  most  important,  and  he  may  consider 
himself  fortunate  if  he  achieves  his  results  as  seen  from  these  points  of 

distinguishing  feature  of  modern  improvement  is  the  clump;  a  name,  which  if  the  first 
letter  were  taken  away,  would  most  accurately  describe  its  form  and  effect." 
Price,  Essays  on  the  Picturesque,  l8io,  v.  i,  p.  244. 


PLANTING    DESIGN 175 

view,  and  escapes  producing  effects  which  are  noticeably  bad  from  other 
and  subordinate  points.  The  color,  the  texture,  and  the  character 
and  suggestion  of  a  plant  remain  substantially  the  same  in  whatever 
aspect  it  is  seen  ;  moreover  these  characteristics  may  be  predicted  with 
considerable  certainty  even  when  the  plants  are  set  out  at  very  small 
size,  whereas  the  exact  shape  of  the  plant  is  to  some  extent  a  matter 
of  accident.  For  this  reason,  these  characteristics  other  than  shape 
bear  an  importance  in  the  designer's  choice  of  plants  greater  than 
would  be  indicated  by  their  effect  in  any  given  design. 

A  group  of  trees  or  shrubs  should  usually  tell  in  the  composition 
not  as  an  undifferentiated  mass  but  as  a  massed  group  of  individuals, 
that  is,  as  a  composition  in  itself,  in  which  the  separate  units  are  to 
some  extent  different  and  In  which  this  difference  is  recognized  in  their 
arrangement.  A  group  of  two  trees  of  approximately  equal  appearance 
is  almost  impossible  to  handle  in  composition  except  when  it  marks  an 
axis  which  runs  between  the  trees.  Two  trees  in  a  group  are  much  more 
likely  to  be  effective  if  one  is  dominant  and  one  subordinate,  for  example, 
one  aspiring  and  dense  in  texture,  the  other  rounded  and  loose,  or  one 
overarching  and  tall,  the  other  low  and  spreading.  Even  at  its  best 
a  composition  of  two  trees  is  difficult  to  manage  and  the  designer  usually 
finds  himself  dealing  in  groups  of  three  or  more.  A  good  group  of 
three  in  a  similar  way  will  usually  have  one  tree  dominant  and  two 
subordinate,  by  whatever  means  of  shape,  color,  or  texture  this  may  be 
accomplished.  It  may  be  said  generally  however  that  it  is  best  to 
seek  the  shape  composition  first,  and  then  to  enhance,  through  an  appro- 
priate choice  of  their  color  and  texture,  the  effects  first  given  the  separate 
plants  by  their  shape.  The  greater  the  number  of  trees  in  an  informal 
group,  the  less  importance  attaches  to  the  exact  location  of  each  tree, 
and  the  more  to  the  general  simulation  of  a  natural  arrangement  in  the 
group  as  a  whole.* 

In  shrub  beds,  as  they  are  used  in  informal  or  naturalistic  design,  Shrub  Beds 
the  same  general  considerations  of  plant  diversity  and  contrast  hold 

*  For  notes  and  diagrammatic  illustrations  of  possibilities  of  grouping  see,  for 
instance,  J.  Major's  The  Theory  and  Practice  of  Landscape  Gardening  (London, 
1852),  the  chapter,  The  Arrangement  and  Grouping  of  Trees,  p.  151-162;  Andre's 
UArt  des  Jardins  (1879),  noting  especially  in  the  chapter,  Plantations,  p.  534-537  and 


176 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Herbaceous 
Beds  and 
Borders 


true  which  we  have  already  discussed  more  particularly  in  relation  to 
trees.  In  formal  design,  however,  shrubs  may  be  used  merely  as  a 
material  from  which  masses  of  man-determined  form  may  be  made, 
which  may  owe  little  of  their  interest  to  any  variation  In  the  character 
of  the  foliage  of  which  they  are  composed.  In  the  informal  planting  of 
a  small  estate  the  separate  varieties  of  shrubs  may  be  arranged  in  fairly 
definite  segregated  groups  in  the  whole  planting,  just  as  flowering  plants 
might  be  arranged  in  a  bed,  both  for  the  mass  effect  of  their  peculiar 
characteristics  whatever  they  may  be,  and  because  the  designer  is  not 
averse  to  the  man-made  effect  so  produced.  In  larger  and  more 
naturalistic  schemes,  a  blending  of  mass  into  mass  is  desirable,  a  use 
perhaps  of  plants  of  several  different  kinds  intermingled  in  any  given 
space  to  preserve  the  apparent  naturalness  of  the  mass  of  the  plantation 
even  at  some  sacrifice  of  crispness  of  minor  effect. 

Herbaceous  plants  in  masses  in  the  landscape  have  their  primary 
importance  through  their  most  striking  characteristic,  —  their  flowers. 
In  conjunction  with  trees  and  shrubs  in  informal  or  naturalistic  border 
plantations,  their  comparatively  loose  texture  and  delicate  form  make 
them  things  to  be  backed  and  protected  by  the  other  coarser  plant 
materials,  but  their  brilliant  flowers  enable  them  to  give  a  dominant 
interest  to  the  recess  in  which  they  are  set,  which  has  already  been 
marked,  by  its  enframement,  as  the  center  of  the  composition.  (See 
Drawing  XXI,  opposite.)  When  this  kind  of  flower  planting  is  de- 
signed, as  it  often  is,  to  be  seen  at  a  considerable  distance,  the  effects 
may  be,  as  we  have  said,  throughout  more  powerful,  the  separate  masses 
of  color  larger,  the  plants  themselves  larger  and  coarser,  than  is  the 
case  in  smaller-scale  compositions. 

As  the  eye  commonly  ranges  along  the  more  distant  flower  beds  at 
an  angle  almost  parallel  to  the  ground,  a  mass  of  color  to  show  any 
extent  to  the  eye  must  have  considerable  extent  on  the  ground  in  a 
direction  measured  away  from  the  eye.  This  leads  the  designer  seeking 
this  particular  effect  to  lay  out  his  important  flower  masses  more  or  less 
in  elongated  areas  radiating  from  the  important  viewpoint,  if  this  can 

p.  553,  which  pages  are  translated  in  article,  Natural  Grouping  of  Trees,  in  Landscape 
Architecture,  Jan.  1917,  v.  7,  p.  83-87;  also  Meyer  und  Ries,  Gartentechnik  und  Gar- 
tenkunst  (1911),  in  chapter,  Die  Bepflanzung  im  Naturstil,  especially  p.  352. 


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PLANTING    DESIGN 177 

be  definitely  located.  On  the  other  hand,  he  may  get  a  succession  of 
bloom  apparently  in  the  same  place,  by  setting  narrow  beds  of  plants 
at  right  angles  to  the  view,  one  behind  another,  so  that  each  when  out 
of  bloom  will  be  concealed  from  the  eye  by  its  neighbor  in  bloom. 

If  the  herbaceous  bed  forms  a  part  of  a  shrub  mass  which  is  informal 
though  not  naturalistic,  it  may  be  well  to  have  the  bright  color  of  the 
flowers  form  a  definite  spot  in  a  composition  in  which  the  separate  parts 
of  the  shrub  beds  as  well  may  have  definite  lines  of  demarcation.  In 
plantations  in  which  there  is  any  considerable  feeling  of  naturalistic 
design,  however,  the  flower  masses  may  well  be  blended  into  each  other 
and  into  the  shrubbery  as  the  shrubbery  masses  are  blended  into  each 
other  and  into  the  trees.  The  areas  of  brilliant  color  due  to  the  grouped 
blossoms  of  any  particular  kind  of  plant  should  be  large  enough  to  be 
efl^ective  in  the  composition,  and  they  may  indeed  be  very  large  with- 
out being  for  that  the  less  natural  in  appearance,  but  their  edges  should 
not  be  definite  as  they  commonly  are  in  the  beds  of  a  formal  garden. 
Among  the  shrubs  there  may  be  summer  lilies  and  fall  asters,  and 
perhaps  in  front  of  the  shrubs  in  places  not  contiguous  with  the  main 
flower  beds  there  may  be  little  subordinate  colonies  of  bloom. 

A  flower  bed  in  a  garden  should  have  a  boundary  with  a  degree  Flower  Beds  as 
of  definiteness  in  scale  with  the  whole  composition.     In  a  thoroughly  ^^^'^  "■'  ^ 
formal  design  the  beds  may  be  defined  in  architectural  lines  by  edgings  inclosed 
of  stone  or  brick  or  concrete.     In  a  less  rigid  scheme  the  beds  may  be 
edged  with   grass   strips,  or  even,   exceptionally,  with   rows  of  small 
stones.     In  a  consistently  loose-textured  garden  the  flowers  may,  as  it 
were,  spill  out  of  the  beds  on  to  the  walks.     This  is  usually  best  done 
when  the  walks  are  of  brick  or  stone.     A  grass  edging  would  be  de- 
stroyed, and  a  stone  edging  or  an3^thing  similar  would  be  at  least  for  a 
time  concealed.     Often  it  seems  well  to  mark  the  boundary  line  of  the 
bed  by  planting,  that  is,  to  use  some  kind  of  plant  edging.     This  may 
be  something  which  accents  the  line  and  form  to  the  maximum  and  does 

little  else,  for  example,  box :  or,  usuallv  at  the  sacrifice  of  some  definite-     . 

'         ,  ^     '  '        '  •  .  .       Arrangement 

ness  of  form,  it  may  itself  carry  flower,  for  example,  sweet  alyssum,  ins,  of  Plants  in 
DCOnv  Relation  to 

The  arrangement  of  plants  in  a  formal  bed  should  be  such  that  the  ^,j^  p^^^  ^j- 
form  of  the  plants  accents  the  form  which  is  created  by  the  outline  of  Plants 


178 ^ LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

the  bed.  The  central  part  of  a  free-standing  bed,  the  back  of  a  bed 
against  a  boundary,  is  usually  the  best  place  for  the  taller  plants.  The 
corners  of  a  bed  may  well  be  planted  with  something  of  close  texture 
and  definite  form  and  of  greater  height  than  the  plants  occupying  the 
sides  between  the  corners.  The  ends  of  beds  may  sometimes  be  accented 
in  the  same  waj^  to  good  effect.     (See  again  Drawing  XXI.) 

In  planting  a  formal  garden,  symmetry  of  important  balanced 
points  is  desirable,  but  as  in  all  formal  design,  symmetry  is  undesirable 
or  at  least  ineffective  if  carried  beyond  the  point  where  it  can  be  per- 
ceived. The  planting  of  one  subordinate  side  bed  need  not  echo  that 
of  the  corresponding  bed  on  the  other  side  of  the  main  axis,  unless  the 
two  beds  tell  in  balance  in  the  composition.  Indeed  we  may  often 
for  local  reasons  have  the  beds  themselves  different  in  form  and  not 
spoil  the  general  composition. 
Arrangement  of         We  must  plan  for  a  succession  of  plants  in  bloom  if  we  intend  to 

Plants  in  have  the  bed  interesting  at  all  times.     We  can  do  this  in  two  ways  :  we 

Relation,  to  •    1       1  1  •  1  1  1  •     1      1-  n 

Time  of  may  plant  perennials  throughout  m  such  a  way  that  one  kind  oi  liower 

Bloom  after  another  comes  into  bloom ;    or,  we  may  plan  to  remove  certain 

plants  when  they  are  through  blooming  and  to  replace  them  by  others. 
In  which  case  we  should  be  dealing  in  part  with  annuals  raised  from 
seed  elsewhere  and  put  in  when  ready  to  take  up  their  share  of  the  work. 
When  one  flower  is  removed  and  replaced  by  another  there  is  a  tem- 
porary lack  of  height  in  the  bed.  If  this  takes  place  in  the  middle  of 
the  bed,  the  mass  effect  is  likely  to  be  bad.  It  is  therefore  often  good 
practice  to  choose  for  the  middle  of  the  bed  strong-growing  perennials 
which  are  good  in  foliage  when  not  in  flower,  for  example,  peony,  or 
Pennsylvania  anemone. 

In  either  case  there  are  two  possible  conceptions  of  the  arrangement 
of  the  plants  within  the  bed.  We  maj^  so  intersperse  our  plants  of 
different  times  of  blooming  that  when  one  dies  down,  another  springs 
from  beside  it  and  practically  occupies  the  same  space  when  it.  In  its 
turn,  comes  to  bloom.  Or,  we  may  have  certain  considerable  areas 
devoted  to  one  plant,  which  when  the  plant  Is  out  of  bloom,  either 
remain  green  with  its  foliage,  or,  after  a  brief  period  as  brown  earth, 
are  again  filled  with  some  other  plant.  In  this  last  case,  in  formal 
beds,  it  will  often  be  necessary  to  arrange  the  Individual  plants  for- 


PLANTING    DESIGN  179 

mally.  That  is,  in  a  small  formal  garden,  if  we  use  enough  different 
plants  to  give  our  client  the  variety  that  he  wants,  we  are  likely  to 
have  the  separate  groups  of  plants  contain  at  times  not  over  ten 
plants,  and  an  informal  arrangement  of  these  is  likely  to  be  incon- 
gruous if  their  separate  form  is  noticeable  at  all ;  for  example,  this 
might  be  so  with  foxglove,  but  not  with  dwarf  marigold  closely  planted. 

Plants  which  are  dominant  in  shape  need  not  also  be  dominant  in  Arrangement  of 

color :    indeed  it  is  often  better  that  thev  should  not  be  so.     The  high    J'^.^'J  *" 

"  °      Kelation  to 

plants,  the  dense  plants,  are  thereby  the  better  enframement  for  the  Color 
spaces  between  them,  which  spaces  can  therefore  be  properly  occupied 
by  those  plants  which  are  most  striking  in  color.     Thus  the  sides  of  the 
beds  are  likely  to  be  the  best  locations  for  the  greatest  display  of  bloom. 

The  flowering  plants  will  normally  be  arranged  in  a  formal  bed 
to  make  some  pattern  harmonious  in  color  and  properly  related  in  its 
shape  to  the  shape  of  the  bed.  The  shape  and  height  and  the  color 
and  texture  of  the  different  flower  masses  must  be  studied  together,  so 
that  the  pattern  shall  be  consistent  and  recognizable,  with  its  dominant 
and  its  subordinate  parts  effectively  arranged  within  the  bed.  Since 
the  different  plants  come  to  their  full  height  at  different  times  and  bloom 
at  different  times,  the  same  bed  will  present  a  sequence  of  different 
patterns  during  the  season.  Even  the  simplest  bed,  when  planted  with 
perennials  only,  may  be  arranged  to  give  at  least  two  different  studied 
effects  :  the  main  flower  display  enframed  by  the  taller  plants  and 
the  flowering  of  these  tall  plants  when  the  lower  plants  are  out  of  bloom. 

There  are,  then,  a  considerable  number  of  characteristics  of  plants  Grouping  of 
which  must  be  taken  into  account  in  making  a  planting  plan  for  a  formal       j-[  f' 
garden-bed,  or  any  planting  plan,  for  that  matter.     Principal  among  Character 
these  characteristics  are  :    form,  color,  texture,  time  of  bloom,  species 
of  plant,  and  cultural  requirements.     These,  together  with  the  particular 
associational  flavor  which  many  plants  bear  in  our  minds,  give  each 
plant  a  character,  and  enable  us  to  group  plants  according  to  these 
characters,  —  we    can    have    evergreen    gardens,    spring    gardens,   rose 
gardens,    alpine    gardens,    old-fashioned  gardens,  or  parts  of  a  garden 
may  be  similarly  unified. 

In  the  clothing  and  decoration  of  the  surface  of  the  ground,  plants  ^^^j^ce^  '^^ 
of  low  growth  find  an  important   place  in  landscape  design.     They  Decoration 


Parterres 


i8o LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

may  simply  give  to  the  ground  surface  a  pleasing  texture  and  a  sufficient 
cover  like  that  of  a  lawn  or  a  hayfield,  or  this  texture  of  low-growing 
plants  maj^  call  attention  to  itself  by  presenting  a  pattern  in  the  design. 
This  pattern  may  be  on  the  one  hand  perhaps  like  the  irregular  flecking 
and  mottling  of  the  surface  of  an  Alpine  meadow  by  the  groups  of 
different  plants  which  grow  there,  each  in  the  situation  where  the  dis- 
tribution of  its  seed  or  its  necessities  of  soil,  sun,  and  water  have  placed 
it,  or  on  the  other  hand  the  pattern  may  be  such  as  a  designer  produces 
on  the  flat  surface  of  a  formal  parterre,  a  formally-composed  arrange- 
ment of  areas  and  lines,  related  in  all  its  characteristics  to  the  rest  of 
a  formal  scheme,  and  serving  much  the  same  esthetic  purpose  as  does 
the  pattern  of  a  Persian  rug  in  the  total  composition  of  a  room. 
Carpet  Bed-  Plainly  it   is   purely   a   question  of  scale  whether   dispositions   of 

pIwJ!!!!!  foliage  of  this  kind  shall  appear  to  be  a  texture,  or  a  pattern  on  the 

surface  of  the  ground,  or  an  arrangement  of  individual  objects  resting 
on  the  ground.  (Compare  Plate  29  with  Tailpiece  on  p.  23.)  A 
parterre  covered  with  carpet  bedding  will  tell  merely  as  a  decorated 
surface  so  long  as  the  projection  of  the  decorating  plants  above  that 
surface  is  not  noticeable  in  comparison  to  its  whole  extent ;  and  certain 
points  in  the  design  may  be  accented  by  objects  of  a  greater  vertical 
dimension  without  necessarily  destroying  the  essential  flatness  of  the 
whole  area.  The  fact  that  the  decorative  areas  in  carpet  bedding  can 
all  be  seen  at  once,  and  are  not,  as  is  often  the  case  with  the  decorative 
beds  in  a  flower  garden,  partially  concealed  one  behind  another  from 
many  points  of  view,  puts  a  special  emphasis  on  shape  relation  in  plan 
in  designs  of  this  kind.  Given  a  reasonably  flat  piece  of  ground,  a 
large  area  can  be  treated  in  this  way  without  any  other  features  than 
the  beds,  and  a  very  striking  result  can  be  produced.  This  kind  of  work, 
being  a  thing  which  is  renewed  and  often  changed  from  year  to  year,  has 
fallen  particularly  into  the  province  of  the  gardener  rather  than  into  that 
of  the  professional  designer.  These  causes  among  others  have  combined 
to  produce  in  Europe  and  in  this  country  a  great  deal  of  strikingly  bad 
design  of  this  sort.  There  is  nothing  esthetically  impossible  about  the 
method  itself,  and  the  ugliness  of  the  many  examples  with  which  we  are 
familiar  can  almost  always  be  directly  traced  to  the  violation  of  some  of 
the  simple  principles  of  composition  which  we  have  already  discussed. 


PLANTING    DESIGN  i8£ 

The  formal  design  of  the  carpet  bedding  must  be  inclosed  and  en- 
framed by  a  sufficiently  powerful  formal  boundary,  and  there  must  be 
some  size,  scale,  and  character  relation  of  the  whole  bedding  design  to 
its  inclosure.  The  neglect  of  this  consideration  has  produced  many 
formal  carpet  bedding  designs  informally  inclosed  or  uninclosed,  and 
very  many  small  formal  flower  beds  floating  unrelated  and  unsupported 
in  a  composition  otherwise  entirely  informal  or  naturalistic.  In  car- 
pet beds  it  must  particularly  be  remembered  that  in  marking  out  one 
group  of  shapes  upon  the  ground,  the  intervening  areas  are  also  inevitably 
given  shapes,  and  either  these  secondary  shapes  must  also  be  beautiful, 
or  the  primary  shapes  must  attract  attention  so  strongly  that  the  others 
remain  unnoticed  to  practically  all  observers.  Much  of  the  ugliness  of 
shape  of  the  carpet  bedding  which  we  see  is  due  to  the  inherent  ugH- 
ness  of  the  designed  shapes,  but  part  of  it  is  due  also  to  the  fact  that  the 
shapes  which  strike  the  eye  of  the  observer  are  not  those  which  were 
primarily  in  the  mind  of  the  man  who  laid  out  the  bed. 

There  must  be  a  scale  relation  between  the  size  and  spacing  of  the 
individual  plants  which  fill  a  given  area  of  carpet  bedding  and  the  size 
of  the  area  itself.  A  satisfactory  effect  may  be  produced  by  decorating  a 
certain  area  with  obviously  separated  dots,  and  an  effective  contrast  is 
possible  between  such  an  area  and  one  so  thickly  planted  as  to  tell  as  a 
uniform  wash  of  color,  but  there  ought  to  be  no  doubt  in  the  mind  of  the 
observer  as  to  which  of  these  effects  the  designer  intended.  There 
should,  too,  be  no  doubt  as  to  whether  the  design  is  the  decoration  of 
a  flat  surface  or  a  grouping  of  individual  objects.  A  carpet  bedding 
design  may  be  accented  by  certain  vases  or  clipped  trees  or  flower  beds 
of  a  considerable  vertical  dimension,  as  we  have  said,  so  long  as  these 
are  in  scale  with  the  whole  design,  but  if  too  many  such  objects  are 
introduced,  the  whole  composition  becomes  ambiguous  and  confused. 

It  is  not  easy  to  use  too  bright  color  in  carpet  bedding  designs.  They 
lie  commonly  in  the  full  light  of  the  sun  and  are  thereby  to  some  extent 
harmonized  ;  they  are  usually  the  decoration  of  large  open  spaces  which 
are  in  public  ownership  or  at  any  rate  enjoyed  by  large  numbers  of 
people,  most  of  whom  have  no  very  refined  sense  of  color.  A  definite 
and  powerful  color  scheme,  then,  is  usually  desirable.  Pure  colors, 
primary  colors,  are  likely  to  be  better  than  delicate  combinations  of 


i82 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

slightly  different  colors,  and  of  subdued  hues ;  but  all  this  is  no  excuse 
for  the  raucous  color  discords  which  we  so  frequently  see  in  public  gardens 
and  parks  and  often  too  in  private  parterres,  which  may  be  avoided 
by  any  designer  with  a  color  sense,  since  the  plants  of  which  the  beds 
are  made  are  well  known  and  their  color  is  predictable  with  sufficient 
accuracy. 

It  is  perfectly  legitimate  that  the  shapes  in  this  flat  decoration 
should  represent  something,  should  have  some  significance  and  asso- 
ciation of  their  own,  but  the  associations  of  the  different  units  should  be 
reasonably  congruous  and  the  shapes  and  colors  produced  by  these 
pictures  or  insignia  in  flowers  must  still  form  harmonious  parts  of  the 
shape  and  the  color  of  the  whole  design.  Our  parks  are  full  of  instances 
where  the  gardener  was  so  much  interested  in  each  pictorial  or  emblem- 
atic composition  for  itself  that  his  total  design  has  in  effect  no  unity 
except  that  of  a  museum  of  curiosities. 
Ground  In  naturalistic  scenes  the  use  of  low-growing  ground  cover  is  subject 

^°^'^  in  a  general  way  to  the  same  considerations  that  apply  to  the  taller- 

growing  shrubs  and  herbaceous  plants,  but  the  smaller  materials  give 
the  designer  an  opportunity  to  display  and  enhance  the  modeling  of  the 
ground  and  at  the  same  time  to  give  an  additional  interest  and  to 
differentiate  area  from  area  by  a  choice  of  different  and  appropriate 
ground-covering  plants.  A  bed  of  ferns  may  grace  the  foot  of  a  rock, 
or  a  mat  of  partridge  vine  run  over  it,  the  darkness  of  a  dell  may  be 
made  deeper  by  a  carpet  of  blue-green  myrtle,  a  sunny  open  space  may 
be  made  still  brighter  by  the  yellow  green  of  moneywort.  The  choice 
of  ground  cover  in  naturalistic  design  is  likely  to  be  motived  much 
more  by  suitability  to  the  growing  conditions  and  the  landscape  char- 
acter than  by  considerations  of  the  form  relations  of  the  areas  dif- 
ferentiated by  this  planting.  (See  Plates  3  and  20.) 
Turf  The  commonest  ground  cover  throughout  our  works  of  landscape 

design  in  moist  climates  is  turf.  Having  an  inconspicuous  texture 
and  a  most  restful  color,  it  subordinates  itself  to  the  surface  which  it 
covers.  It  serves  as  a  harmonizing  background  against  which  flower 
beds,  shrub  masses,  tree  groups,  or  structures  are  relieved.  (See  Plate 
30.)  Together  with  paths,  in  formal  garden  designs,  it  makes  a  definite 
but  subordinate  ground  work  of  the  pattern  in  which  the  flower  beds 


PLANTING    DESIGN i^ 

are  the  dominant  areas.  In  naturalistic  design  it  reveals,  more  than 
any  other  material,  the  form  of  the  ground  which  it  clothes,  and  being 
more  than  any  other  ground  cover  resistant  to  the  damage  from  tram- 
pling feet,  it  has  come  to  be  the  chosen  surface  of  the  open  spaces  of  our 
parks  and  estates.  (See  Plate  33.)  The  desirable  fineness  and  smooth- 
ness of  its  texture  will  depend  on  the  refinement  of  finish  of  the  design, 
and  the  amount  and  expense  of  upkeep  thereby  entailed  will  depend  on 
the  intensity  of  its  use.  The  effect  of  an  English  lawn  before  some  well- 
kept  great  country  house  is  worth  the  century  of  care  which  has  brought 
it  to  its  perfection.  In  an  outlying  metropolitan  reservation,  or  before 
a  summer  cottage  on  the  rugged  Maine  coast,*  a  grass  area  cut  but  twice 
a  year,  and  resembling  a  pasture  rather  than  a  lawn,  might  well  be  not 
only  less  expensive  but  also  more  appropriate  and  beautiful. 

In  the  smaller  naturalistic  scenes  where  the  ground  surface  as  well  Planting  in 
as  the  planting  masses  may  be  modeled  by  the  designer,  there  are  ■^"^''°"  '^ 
certain  relations  of  ground  form  and  form  of  planting  mass  which  the 
landscape  architect  will  seek.  In  larger  landscapes  these  relations 
will  also  be  valuable,  but  they  are  obtainable  by  the  choice  and  location 
of  the  planting  rather  than  by  the  more  expensive  grading  changes  in 
the  surface  of  the  ground.  A  mass  of  planting  usually  looks  best  if  the 
ground  slopes  slightly  up  to  its  foot.  A  base  ma}"  be  thus  given  to  the 
planting  mass  and  a  sequential  relation  suggested  between  the  planting 
and  the  open  ground  on  a  small  lawn,  with  a  change  of  ground  elevation 
of  only  a  few  inches.  In  larger  schemes  this  may  be  a  greater  under- 
taking, but  sometimes  where  the  ground  surface  rounds  over  and  slopes 
down  in  a  place  where  the  designer  would  prefer  that  at  least  for  a  few 
feet  it  should  remain  level  or  slope  up,  the  difficulty  may  be  overcome 
by  placing  lower  shrubs  where  the  ground  surface  still  maintains  a 
satisfactory  modeling,  and  then  behind  these,  at  a  lower  level,  larger 
shrubs  or  trees  which  shall  carry  the  line  up  with  their  surface  and  not 
down  with  the  now  concealed  surface  of  the  ground.  Similarly  an 
elevation  which  is  too  slight  to  bear  its  part  in  the  design  may  be  in- 
creased by  planting,  which  may  be  highest  on  top  of  the  knoll,  lowest 
where  it  merges  into  the  flat ;    and  thus  very  considerable  effects  of 

*  See  Charles  Eliot's  Anglomania  in  Park  Making,  an  article  reprinted  in  Charles 
Eliot,  Landscape  Architect,  p.  215-218.     (See  References.) 


i84 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

ground  modeling  may  be  produced  in  the  inexpensive  material  of 
plant  foliage.  Here,  as  always  where  planting  is  used  to  screen  out 
some  undesirable  thing  from  the  composition,  the  winter  effect  must 
also  be  considered,  and  if  this  is  important  either  very  close-growing 
deciduous  plants  or  else  evergreens  should  be  used.  When  the  knolls 
and  hollows  are  small,  and  consequently  the  planting  plays  a  propor- 
tionally more  important  part  in  the  design,  the  scale  relation  of  planting 
to  topography  must  be  particularly  studied,  so  that  it  may  explain  the 
topography  and  not  obscure  it.  A  little  hill  might  be  made  more  effec- 
tive by  a  planting  of  hawthorn,  but  quite  dwarfed  by  a  grove  of  elms. 


ROUNDED  MILL 
BARE 


EEIATlOAl  OFPiiWr-rORnTO  QROUND-rORM 


POINTEDHILL  ROUNOEDrtrLL 

Wirn  HARMONIOU6  PLANTINQ  WITH  HABMONI0U5  PLANTING 


DRAWING  XXII 

In  large  compositions  where  the  actual  height  of  any  tree-planting 
which  might  be  made  would  add  but  little  proportionally  to  the  height 
of  the  hill  which  is  to  be  planted,  the  form  and  character  relation,  rather 
than  the  relation  of  size,  between  the  planting  and  the  ground  becomes 
proportionally  more  important,  although  in  any  naturalistic  design  it  is 
to  be  considered.*  A  sharp-pointed  and  craggy  hill  may  perhaps  best 
be  crowned  or  accented  with  trees  of  aspiring  form ;  a  round  and  gentle 
hill  might  have  upon  its  top  an  irregular  and  crouching  mass  of  round- 
headed  deciduous  trees  which  carry  their  branches  close  to  the  ground. 
*  Cf.  Plant  Character  and  Landscape  Character,  p.  165. 


PLANTING    DESIGN 185 

(See  Drawing  XXII,  on  p.  184.)  Many  other  less  obvious  form  rela- 
tions in  composition  between  plant  and  ground  are  of  course  possible, 
but  often  some  economic  exigencies  of  the  design  will  fix  the  form  of 
the  planting,  and  its  esthetic  relation  to  the  topography  will  be  rather 
one  of  character.  * 

The  planting  which  borders  the  shores  of  a  natural  or  naturalistic  Waterside 
pond  should  bear  in  design  much  the  same  relation  to  the  water  surface  ^'««'"'g 
that  planting  surrounding  an  open  naturalistic  lawn  might  bear  to  the 
surface  of  the  turf;  and  the  pleasant  relations  of  accented  promontory, 
enframed  bay,  and  free-standing  island  are  much  the  same  in  each  case. 
(See  Plates  4,  26,  and  32.)  The  line  between  water  and  land  however 
is  a  more  important  thing  in  the  composition  than  the  line  between  turf 
and  shrubbery.  This  is  partly  due  to  the  flatness  of  the  water  surface 
which  necessarily  meets  the  shore  everywhere  in  a  definite  line,  but 
largely  due  to  the  reflection  of  the  shore  in  the  water.  The  planting 
which  stands  on  the  brink  shows  practically  its  whole  form  in  reversed 
reflection  ;  the  planting  standing  back  from  the  shore  shows  its  tops  only, 
and  in  the  case  of  a  small  pool  or  in  any  other  circumstances  where  the 
observer  looks  down  at  any  considerable  angle  on  the  surface  of  the 
water,  objects  standing  at  any  great  distance  back  from  the  shore  are 
not  included  in  the  reflection,  —  a  fact  which  gives  to  planting  directly 
on  the  shore-line  a  special  importance  in  the  scene.  Particularly  where 
the  surface  of  the  water  is  quiet,  both  the  real  shore  and  its  reflected 
counterpart  must  be  considered  in  the  composition.  An  overhanging 
white-barked  birch  tree  might  not  be,  alone,  too  striking  an  object  in 
the  composition,  but  it  might  prove  so  when  reenforced  by  its  reflec- 
tion beneath.  A  low  bank  of  shrubbery  which  in  itself  was  not  sufficient 
boundary  for  a  river  surface  in  a  certain  landscape  might  be  quite 
enough  for  its  purpose  when  doubled  by  its  image  in  the  water.  As  the 
line  of  sight  of  the  observer  rises  from  its  point  of  reflection  on  the  water 
surface  to  where  it  strikes  the  further  shore,  any  overhanging  planting 
and  any  deep  shadows  within  the  plants  on  the  water's  edge  will  tell 
with  their  full  effect.  On  the  other  hand,  a  low  and  shelving  shore, 
and  particularly  a  shore  grown  with  reed  and  sedge  that  conceals  the 
water's  edge,  will  be  diminished  and  obscured  in  reflection. 
*  For  Rock  Planting,  see  Chapter  VIII,  p.  147. 


86 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Planting  in 
Relation  to 
Architectural 
Structures 


Planting  as 
Enframement 


Often  the  designer  may  judiciously  somewhat  accent  all  the  effects 
of  his  shore  treatment  because  the  observer  is  kept  at  a  distance  by  the 
foreground  water-surface,  but  if  there  is  boating  on  the  water  the  condi- 
tions may  well  be  reversed,  and  the  planting  may  then  be  arranged  to 
be  inspected  close  at  hand. 

In  its  relation  to  architectural  structures,*  planting  bears  its  part 
in  landscape  composition  in  these  ways :  it  enframes,  limiting  the 
composition  of  which  the  structure  is  the  dominant  object  and  concen- 
trating attention  upon  the  structure ;  it  leads  up  to  the  structure  as  a 
subordinate  mass  to  a  dominant  one,  —  "tying  the  structure  to  the 
ground,"  as  the  phrase  goes;  and  it  decorates,  perhaps  paneling  the 
face  of  a  structure  with  chosen  patterns  of  green,  perhaps  changing  the 
texture  of  parts  of  the  facade  from  that  of  stone  to  that  of  leaves. 

A  building  may  be  entirely  embowered  in  trees  or  ensconced  among 
them  (see  Drawing  XXV,  opp.  p.  196,  and  Drawing  XXVI,  opp.  p.  198)  ; 
a  small  house  may  be  actually  completely  canopied  by  a  great  tree ; 
but  more  commonly  the  enframement  of  a  building  by  trees  is  an  effect 
best  seen  from  some  one  point  of  view,  a  point  of  view  usually  in  which 
the  trees  are  nearer  to  the  spectator  than  is  the  house.  (See  Drawing 
XXIV,  opp.  p.  192.)  An  overarching  tree  like  an  elm  is  particularly 
effective  for  this  purpose,  because  it  not  only  bounds  the  composition 
on  the  sides  but  to  a  considerable  extent  upon  the  top,  and  its  spreading 
shadow  upon  the  ground  may  inclose  the  view  at  the  bottom  as  well. 
But  enframement  only  upon  the  sides  is  often  effective  in  landscape 
composition,  and  even  trees  like  Lombardy  poplars  may  serve  as  satis- 
factory enframement  for  a  building. 

Though  a  tree  may  form  the  boundary  of  a  definite  and  recognizable 
composition  of  which  a  house  is  the  dominant  object,  still  the  whole 
shape  of  the  tree  will  be  seen  in  relation  to  the  shape  of  the  house  in  the 
broader  landscape,  and  the  shape  harmony  of  these  two  objects  in  the 
composition  cannot  be  ignored.  A  building  however  is  so  utterly  differ- 
ent an  object  from  a  tree  in  form,  in  texture,  in  association,  that  it  is 
quite  idle  to  attempt  to  predict  for  an  unknown  case  whether  the  rela- 
tion between  house  and  tree  should  be  that  of  similarity  or  that  of  con- 
trast.    There  are  cases,  that  is,  where  a  round-headed  oak  would  be 

*  Planting  in  relation  to  roads  is  discussed  under  Roads,  in  Chapter  X,  p.  223. 


PLANTING    DESIGN 187 

the  appropriate  tree  to  form  a  part  of  a  setting  of  a  low  building  of 
level  skyline  ;  there  are  also  cases,  however,  where  a  group  of  Lombardy 
poplars  would  better  serve  this  purpose  in  the  composition. 

The  span  of  a  bridge*  is  necessarily  somewhat  bounded  and  en- 
framed by  its  abutments  when  it  is  looked  at  along  the  reach  of  water 
which  it  crosses,  but  the  compositional  strength  of  the  masses  on 
each  side  between  which  the  bridge  springs  can  be  much  increased 
by  planting  which  rises  well  above  the  level  of  the  bridge.  (See 
Plate  32.)  Such  planting  serves  also,  of  course,  as  pictorial  enframe- 
ment  for  the  bridge  itself.  The  best  outlook  from  the  bridge  is  pre- 
sumably up  or  down  the  stream  from  well  out  upon  the  bridge-span, 
and  these  same  plantations  will  give  some  sense  of  enframement  to  this 
view  as  well. 

Planting  may  concentrate  the  attention  upon  a  structure  by  converg-  Planting  as 

ing  lines  in  perspective,  as  where  an  allee  of  trees  leads  to  a  building  or  Transition  be- 

,  .  1-1  r  f    1  •      •       1    i'^^^n  Ground 

to  Its  entrance ;   in  this  case  there  is  also  enframement  of  the  principal  and  Structure 

object  in  the  view.  (See  Drawing  XI,  opp.  p.  82.)  In  the  relation  of 
minor  planting  masses  to  a  building,  two  effects  are  commonly  sought  : 
first,  to  fix  the  attention  upon  some  important  part  of  the  building,  as 
where  a  shrub  mass  is  placed  on  each  side  of  and  leading  up  to  a  door,  a 
French  window,  or  perhaps  a  gabled  end  or  pavilion  of  the  house ;  and 
second,  to  make  a  sequential  connection  between  the  horizontal  lines 
of  the  ground  and  the  vertical  surface  of  the  building.  (See  Drawing 
XXIII,  opp.  p.  190,  and  Drawing  XXVI,  opp.  p.  198.)  Where  planting 
is  carried  out  from  the  corners  of  a  house,  such  an  arrangement  serves 
also  in  a  way  as  enframement  and  foreground  for  the  facade  of  the  house 
between  the  two  corner  plantings.  The  appearance  of  the  house  may 
be  greatly  improved  by  a  simple  shrub  planting,  but  in  modern  American 
practice,  particularly  on  smaller  places  where  often  little  skill  is  em- 
ployed in  the  design,  the  planting  of  shrubs  about  the  bases  of  buildings, 
for  these  purposes,  for  decoration,  or  merely  from  a  restless  desire  to 
take  away  every  effect  of  bareness,  has  been  considerably  overdone. 
Some  buildings,  notably  perhaps  the  Tudor  country  houses,  are  at  their 
best  when  their  walls  rise  clear  from  the  clipped  turf  or  the  paved  terrace. 
(See  Drawing  VI,  opp.  p.  48.)     A  woodland  cottage  might  look  well  if 

*  Cf.  Chapter  X,  p.  216. 


i88 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Planting  as 
Decoration  of 
Structure 


entirely  surrounded  by  small  planting,  but  with  the  ordinary  dwelling- 
house  it  is  usually  a  mistake  completely  to  surround  its  base  with  an 
indiscriminate  garniture  of  shrubbery. 

Planting  may  be  used  purely  for  the  decoration  of  the  facade  of  a 
building,  as,  for  instance,  where  vine-covered  lattices  of  definite  shapes 
are  used  as  a  part  of  its  architectural  design.  To  some  extent  this  is  the 
effect  of  specimen  evergreens  placed  close  to  the  building  on  each  side 
of  an  entrance.  Formal  rows  of  evergreens  or  architecturally-clipped 
plants  may  be  set  out  in  the  ground  or  placed  in  tubs  and  may,  at  least 
in  certain  views,  serve  as  a  paneling  and  decoration  of  the  lower  part  of  a 
building  fagade.  Similarly,  vines  or  flowering  plants  in  window-boxes 
may  add  a  note  of  color  or  an  area  of  green  to  the  architectural  com- 
position ;  or  vines  may  actually  be  grown  over  the  surface  of  the  build- 
ing, perhaps  to  relieve  some  harshness  of  form,  perhaps  to  give  panels  of 
green,  perhaps  even  completely  to  change  the  texture  of  the  building 
to  that  created  by  the  leafage  of  the  vine,  and  to  throw  a  charitable 
mantle  of  vegetation  over  a  multitude  of  architectural  sins. 

It  is  to  be  noticed  that  the  texture  of  the  leafage  of  any  vine  is 
more  diffuse  and  weak  than  the  texture  of  any  material  used  in  archi- 
tectural construction,  and  that  therefore  if  this  vine-texture  is  to  cover 
considerable  areas  of  a  house  or  of  a  wall,  these  vine-covered  areas  would 
better  be  wall  rather  than  post,  curtain  rather  than  pavilion.  That  is, 
the  areas  which  are  less  important,  less  functional  architecturally,  as  it 
were,  should  be  given  the  softer  texture.  (See  again  Drawing  VI.) 
Another  decoration  of  architectural  fagade  by  planting  which  is  well 
worthy  of  the  designer's  serious  attention  is  the  falling  of  the  shadows  of 
trees  on  the  sides  of  a  building.  An  otherwise  monotonous  expanse 
may  be  redeemed  by  the  shadow  tracery  of  winter  branches  or  the 
dappling  of  summer  shade ;  the  main  entrance  of  a  building  may  be 
made  more  important  by  the  shadows  of  two  trees  which  subdue  the 
walls  on  each  side  of  it. 


CHAPTER  X 
DESIGN  OF   STRUCTURES   IN   RELATION  TO   LANDSCAPE 

Buildings  in  relation  to  landscape  —  Buildings  subordinate  to  natural  character 

—  Buildings  dominating  landscape  —  Form  relations  of  buildings  and  landscape 
surroundings  —  Building  groups  —  Texture  relations  —  Color  relations  — 
Shelters  and  pavilions  —  Terraces  —  Parapets  —  Retaining  walls  —  Terrace 
banks  —  Steps  —  Informal  design  —  In  naturalistic  design  —  Walls  and  fences 

—  Walls  :  materials  and  decoration  —  Fences,  lattices,  and  grilles  —  Gateways 
AND  gates  —  Statuary — Its  value  among  decorative  objects  in  design  —  Its 
setting  in  landscape  composition  —  Architectural  and  sculptural  water 
features  —  Grottoes  and  wall  fountains  —  Cascades  —  Water-ramps  —  Free- 
standing fountains  —  Pools  and  basins  —  Bridges  —  Their  forms  and  materials  — 
Roads  and  paths  - —  Roads  in  naturalistic  landscape  —  Form  of  roads  —  Road 
intersections  —  Views  of  and  from  roads  —  Planting  and  roads  —  Paths  in  natu- 
ralistic design  —  Form  of  paths  —  Roads  in  formal  design  —  Paths  in  formal 
design  —  Materials  of  roads  and  paths. 

In  determining  the  esthetic  relation  of  a  building  to  the  landscape  Buildings  in 
of  which  it  forms  a  part,  the  designer  must  first  decide  whether  as  a  f^'^^^°"  ^° 
whole  the  particular  scene  is  to  be  considered  as  expressing  the  char- 
acter of  a  natural  landscape,  or  whether,  on  the  other  hand,  it  should 
express  by  its  style  the  dominance  and  the  directing  will  of  man. 

If  a  landscape  character  is  to  be  dominant  in  the  scene,  then  the  Buildivp 
building  must  be  in  some  way  subordinated.     It  may  still  be  the  center  ^^^^^'/J^^ 
of  the  composition,  indeed  it  may  still  be  more  interesting  than  any  Character 
other  one  thing  in  the  composition,  but  the  scene  should  give  the  effect 
that  the  building  is  related  harmoniously  to  a  landscape  which  as  a 
whole  expresses  its  own  natural  character.     The  building  may  excep- 
tionally be  made  harmonious  with  the  landscape  in  form ;  it  may  have 
an  irregular  shape,  perhaps  a  rounded  thatched  roof  (see  Drawing  VII, 
opp.  p.  50),  and  it  may  be  closely  fitted  to  irregularities  of  the  ground. 
(See  Drawing  XXIV,  opp.  p.   192,  and  also  Plate  36,  for  adaptation  of 

189 


I90 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

building  arrangement  to  topography.)  More  frequently  it  is  har- 
monious with  the  landscape  in  texture  and  color :  the  gray  green  of 
its  painted  woodwork  may  harmonize  with  the  color  of  the  surrounding 
foliage  ;  the  texture  and  tone  of  its  stonework,  taken  from  a  local  quarry, 
may  match  the  outcrop  of  the  same  stone  appearing  near  it ;  its  thatched 
roof  and  lichen-covered  walls  may  be  quite  similar  to  the  tree-trunks 
behind  it  and  to  the  dead  grasses  before  its  door.  Then  too  a  build- 
ing may  be  effectively  harmonized  with  the  landscape,  or  at  least 
prevented  from  appearing  incongruous  with  it,  by  being  very  largely 
screened  from  sight  by  mantling  vines  and  surrounding  or  overhanging 
trees.     (See  Drawing  XXVI,  opp.  p.  198.) 

We  should  bear  in  mind,  however,  in  our  endeavors  to  subordinate 
a  building  to  a  natural  or  naturalistic  landscape,  the  fact  that  it  is  not 
essential  for  harmony  that  the  shape  of  the  building  should  resemble 
any  natural  form.  (See  Plate  35.)  The  building  need  not  be  rounded 
like  a  great  tree,  or  jagged  like  a  cliff,  or  irregular  or  flowing  in  outline 
like  the  surface  of  a  mass  of  shrubbery;  indeed  an  attempt  to  do  any 
of  these  things,  however  successful  it  might  be  in  subordinating  the 
building  to  the  rest  of  the  scene,  would  inevitably,  if  carried  to  any 
length,  result  in  architectural  ugliness.  The  building  should  be  beauti- 
ful, convenient,  efficient  after  its  own  kind.  In  fact,  fitness  to  local 
conditions,  and  simple  form  obviously  expressing  a  practical  need  in 
construction  or  in  use,  tend  of  themselves  to  make  the  building  less 
expressive  of  man's  will,  more  expressive  of  man's  necessity,  and  so 
less  incongruous  with  natural  expression. 

A  building  usually  assumes  greater  harmony  with  the  landscape 
as  it  grows  old,  that  is,  as  it  is  subjected  for  a  longer  and  longer  time  to 
the  natural  forces  of  rain  and  wind  and  weather  which  are  operating 
also  on  all  the  other  objects  of  the  scene.  This  is  noticeably  true, 
even  with  the  old  wooden  New  England  farmhouse.  (See  Drawing 
XXIII,  opposite.)  In  the  case  of  a  masonry  structure,  it  is  of  course 
more  marked.  The  ivy  clad  ruins  of  a  castle  may  form  quite  as  restful 
and  integral  a  portion  of  the  scene  as  would  a  natural  cliff  in  the  same 
place. 
Di)   inatim  ^^  ^^^  scene  of  which  the  building  is  a  part  expresses  primarily 

Landscape  human  ideals  and  is  arranged  obviously  in  relation  to  man's  use,  then 


STRUCTURES    IN    LANDSCAPE i9j 

the  building  almost  certainly  should  be  the  dominant  object  in  the 
composition.  This  effect  is  not  difficult  to  attain,  for  to  the  ordinary 
person  a  building,  like  any  of  the  other  works  of  man,  is  in  itself  inter- 
esting. A  building  attracts  interest  also  by  its  form,  —  definite,  rec- 
tilinear, obvious,  expressing  the  uses  for  which  man  designed  it.  Then, 
too,  the  definiteness  of  a  building's  texture  and  the  crispness  of  its 
decoration  attract  the  attention  more  than  does  the  texture  of  natural 
trees  and  rocks ;  and  in  color,  though  to  be  sure  the  flowers  may  boast 
colors  as  bright,  few  natural  objects  present  such  considerable  areas 
or  simple  schemes  of  unbroken  color,  and  few  indeed  can  vie  with  the 
colors  of  our  modern  American  wooden  houses,  whether  in  the  city  or 
in  the  country.  Where  marble  or  limestone  or  any  light-colored  stone 
is  used,  the  building  becomes  a  very  conspicuous  object  in  contrast  to 
the  vegetation  about  it.  And  —  an  important  consideration —  a 
building  of  an  architectural  style  in  which  the  parts  are  all  obviously 
related  to  one  compositional  whole,  particularly  if  there  is  balance 
and  repetition  of  parts,  will  be  thereby  especially  unified,  distinctive, 
and  conspicuous  in  the  landscape.     (See  Drawing  XXV,  opp.  p.  196.) 

/In  the  immediate  surroundings  of  buildings,  the  outdoor  forms  may 
be  definitely  subordinated  to  a  dominant  architectural  conception  by 
the  creation  of  terraces,  parterres,  ramps,  steps,  by  the  formal  in- 
closure  of  areas  of  ground,  by  the  use  of  vines  and  shrubs  and  trees 
trimmed  and  clipped  as  objects  of  architectural  decoration.  (See 
Drawing  X,  opp.  p.  80.)  Farther  from  the  building,  the  trees  may 
retain  their  natural  forms,  though  still  made  a  part  of  the  same  scheme 
as  the  building  by  being  arranged  in  man-made  compositions.  The 
roads  and  paths,  perhaps  formal,  perhaps  yielding  their  formality 
unwillingly  to  topographic  necessities,  in  any  case  express  man's  use 
of  the  ground,  and  point  to  the  building  as  the  center  of  the  scheme. 
Of  course  there  is  a  limit  in  any  man-made  scheme  beyond  which  man 
does  not  endeavor  to  make  the  whole  of  the  landscape  express  his  will. 
In  the  Italian  villas,  there  is  usually  a  definite  wall  which  marks  this 
limit.  In  many  English  estates  and  modern  American  parks  and 
large  country  places,  there  is  a  transition  rather  than  a  demarcation 
between  man's  and  nature's  domain.  Whatever  may  be  the  treatment 
of  the  immediate  surroundings  of  the  buildings,  however,  the  buildings 


192 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Form  Relations 
of  Buildings 
and  Land- 
scape Sur- 
roundings 


may  dominate  a  much  larger  landscape  by  being  so  placed,  usually 
on  a  height,  that  the  views  from  them  sweep  the  whole  surrounding 
country  and  that  they  themselves  form  the  most  important  object  in 
the  views  to  be  obtained  from  anywhere  in  their  vicinity.  It  was  partly 
the  endeavor  to  assert  this  dominance  over  a  large  sweep  of  landscape 
in  the  flat  country  of  France  and  parts  of  England  which  brought 
about  the  schemes  of  long  allees  and  vistas  like  those  at  Fontainebleau, 
Versailles,  and  Hampton  Court.     (See  Drawing  IX,  opp.  p.  78.) 

It  goes  without  saying  that  a  building  as  a  unit  in  landscape  must 
bear  a  proper  compositional  relation  in  form  and  color  and  texture  to 
the  other  objects  in  the  same  scene.*  We  have  already  observed  how 
in  a  formal  composition  the  other  objects,  even  though  they  be  such 
things  as  trees,  may  be  given  formal  shapes,  or  at  least  arranged  in  a 
formal  way.  More  commonly,  the  other  objects  in  the  scene  will  be 
trees,  hills,  and  so  on,  fundamentally  different  in  form  and  particularly 
in  texture  from  the  building.  Pleasant  form  composition  is  however 
no  less  possible  in  such  a  scene.  To  some  extent  the  form  of  the  build- 
ing, even  though  it  be  the  dominant  form  in  the  scene,  —  indeed  par- 
ticularly in  such  a  case,  —  may  be  chosen  to  harmonize  with  the  land- 
scape composition.  The  form  of  a  building  crowning  a  broken  and 
aspiring  hill  may  well  be  in  itself,  within  architectural  limits,  irregular 
and  aspiring,  and  its  upper  part  more  so  than  Its  base,  marking,  as  it 
were,  a  culmination  and  concentration  of  the  character  of  the  whole 
hill  in  its  crowning  architectural  object.  Perhaps  the  best  known 
example  of  this  composition  is  Mont  St.  Michel.  Similarly,  for  the 
sake  of  harmony,  a  building  in  a  great  plain  might  be  of  a  low  simple 
spreading  form  in  which  horizontal  lines  were  dominant.  It  is  emphati- 
cally true,  however,  that  harmony  of  this  kind  may  be  obtained  at 
too  great  sacrifice  of  other  considerations.  The  low  horizontal-lined 
building  on  an  aspiring  hilltop  for  the  sake  of  form  contrast  would 
probably  be  a  failure  composltionally,  but  a  tall  tower  dominating  a 
plain,  either  alone  or,  perhaps  better,  rising  from  a  crouching,  hori- 
zontal-lined mass  of  buildings,  would  probably  be  a  better  thing  In  the 
whole  composition  of  the  plain  landscape  than  would  the  low  buildings 
without  some  such  relieving  feature  :  for  example,  the  long  low  line  of 
*  Cf.  Planting  in  Relation  to  Architectural  Structures,  Chapter  IX,  p.  186. 


STRUCTURES    IN    LANDSCAPE  193 

Padua  with  its  uprising  towers.  Where  the  building  stands  on  only 
a  slight  eminence,  the  composition  may  demand  that  the  ground  be 
modeled  as  a  base  for  the  building;  that  is,  that  it  shall  offer  the  build- 
ing an  apparently  sufficient  pedestal  on  which  to  stand,  and  that  its 
outline  shall  lead  the  eye  from  the  surrounding  ground  surface  in  and 
up  to  the  vertical  sides  of  the  building.  This  may  be  done  in  different 
ways  according  to  circumstances,  for  instance,  in  some  compositions 
by  an  informal  knoll,  in  others  by  a  formal  terrace. 

In  a  landscape  composition,  the  form  of  the  building  must  be  con- 
sidered not  only  in  relation  to  the  form  of  the  ground  on  which  it 
stands,  but  in  its  relation  as  an  object  to  other  objects  in  the  same 
scene,  hills  or  trees  or  whatever  these  other  objects  may  be.  Some 
thought  might  well  be  given  to  the  form  of  the  distant  hills  by  the 
designer  who  is  determining  the  form  of  a  building,  but  this  would  be 
a  somewhat  subtle  consideration  almost  surely  overborne  by  other 
more  important  relations.  The  form  relation  of  the  trees  which  sur- 
round a  building  to  the  building  itself  is  however  a  matter  of  great 
importance  in  landscape  design.  This  we  have  discussed  in  the  pre- 
ceding chapter.* 

The  examples  of  the  relations  of  building  to  landscape  which  we 
have  considered  are  obvious  ones  which  are  capable  of  some  statement 
in  words.  There  are  an  infinite  number  of  compositional  relations 
existing  between  the  various  forms  and  styles  of  architectural  struc- 
tures and  the  various  undulations  and  complicated  modelings  of  ground 
surface  and  the  multitudinous  shapes  of  vegetation.  The  choice  of  the 
form  relation  in  almost  all  of  these  cases  can  only  be  a  matter  of  trained 
feeling  applied  to  the  individual  problem. 

When  buildings  are  considered  simply  as  objects  taking  their  part 
with  other  objects  in  landscape  compositions,  their  outline  or  silhou- 
ette, their  main  mass,  must  be  studied  first,  and  next  the  relation  of 
their  main  constituent  masses,  of  wings  to  central  mass,  pavilions  to 
connecting  walls,  roofs  to  walls,  window  and  door  openings  to  wall- 
space.  This  the  landscape  architect  should  have  a  feeling  for,  —  thus 
far  he  should  not  only  comprehend  the  architect's  motives  but  be 
able  to  suggest  changes,  from  his  greater  knowledge  of  the  effect  of 

*  Pages  186-187. 
o 


194 


LANDSCAPE     DESIGN 


Building 
Groups 


Texture  Rela- 
tions of 
Buildings  and 
Landscape 
Surroundings 


the  setting.  This  knowledge  of  form  will  be  an  abstract  one,  not  based 
on  knowledge  of  architectural  detail  and  material,  and  therefore  limited, 
when  applied  to  architectural  forms,  and  subject  to  practical  correction 
by  the  architect's  greater  knowledge  of  what  can  be  built  and  how  the 
economic  and  esthetic  ends  of  the  building  itself  should  be  served. 

•'These  same  general  considerations  apply-  to  the  design  of  groups 
of  buildings  in  their  relation  to  the  landscape,  but  since  the  separation 
of  the  units  makes  the  whole  scheme  more  flexible,  it  is  possible  to  adapt 
the  form  of  a  group  of  buildings  to  its  surroundings  more  completely 
than  can  be  done  with  the  form  of  a  single  building.  The  esthetic 
conception  of  the  whole  group  may  be  absolutely  formal,  —  a  formal 
harmony  of  size,  shape,  position,  and  orientation  of  the  buildings. 
If  this  conception  is  chosen  for  a  scheme,  the  buildings  must  be  large 
enough  and  close  enough  together,  and  in  general  their  formal  relation 
strong  enough,  to  leave  no  doubt  of  its  dominance/  Formally-related 
college  buildings  surrounding  a  large  and  irregular  open  space,  large 
formal  designs  for  civic  centers  carried  out  in  diminutive  buildings, 
can  be  found  as  examples  of  ineffective  design  of  this  sort.  In  other 
cases,  the  relation  of  the  buildings  in  a  group  to  each  other  and  to  the 
landscape  may  be  one  of  mass  and  texture  and  color  harmony  rather 
than  one  of  axial  relation  and  orientation.  In  such  groups  the  shapes 
of  the  buildings  themselves  are  likely  to  be  more  irregular,  and  the 
influence  of  the  topography  more  directly  recognized.  Trees  and 
other  vegetation  may  play  a  part  less  subordinate  to  the  architecture 
than  they  do  in  a  more  formal  design.  If  the  effect  of  a  group  is  de- 
sired, however,  the  relations  of  size  and  position  of  buildings  are  to  be 
studied  no  less  than  in  a  symmetrically  balanced  scheme.  This  matter 
of  building  grouping  is  one  in  which  the  landscape  architect  may  well 
have  a  hand,  but,  at  the  scale  at  which  this  book  is  written,  it  can  hardly 
be  treated  in  more  detail  here.* 

The  texture  and  the  color  of  the  surface  of  buildings  are  often  deter- 
mined by  the  choice  of  material  of  construction ;  and  the  necessary 
relation  of  texture  to  form,  and  of  form  to  architectural  style  and  use, 
will  in  many  cases  make  the  choice  of  material  and  texture  the  un- 
*  See  articles  by  A.  M.  Githens :  The  Group-Plan,  in  the  Brickbuilder,  July,  Sept. 
1906,  V.  15,  p.  134-138,  179-182. 


STRUCTURES    IN    LANDSCAPE 1^5 

avoidable  result  of  the  choice  of  style  or  of  the  recognition  of  use  by 
form.  In  masonry  the  available  stone  and  the  way  in  which  it  can  best 
be  laid  may  determine  the  texture  produced.  As  objects  in  landscape 
design,  architectural  structures  are  considerably  dependent  upon  their 
texture  for  their  compositional  effect  in  conjunction  with  other  objects. 
Smoothness  of  texture,  and  consequent  possibility  of  definite  pattern 
in  small  detail,  enables  an  object  most  completely  to  express  a  man- 
imposed  style,  and  so  to  differentiate  itself  from  the  landscape  ;  whereas 
a  rough  texture,  that  is,  a  certain  fortuitous  arrangement  of  the  smaller 
parts  of  the  surface,  makes  a  structure  more  nearly  similar  to  the  trees 
and  rocks  of  a  natural  landscape.  Particularly  in  the  smaller  structures, 
the  designer  should  be  on  his  guard  as  to  this  definiteness  and  perhaps 
stiffness  of  form  produced  by  fine  texture.  A  fountain,  a  sundial,  the 
curb  of  a  fountain  basin,  any  such  object  which  must  have  definite 
form  in  small  size,  may  well  be  made  of  some  smooth-textured  material ; 
on  the  other  hand,  many  mistakes  are  made  in  the  choice  of  a  texture 
too  fine,  and  so  of  too  rigid  a  surface  and  too  definite  an  outline,  for 
things  like  steps  and  walks  and  walls  which  are  not  designed  to  be  them- 
selves the  dominant  objects  in  the  scene,  but  which  are  to  form  part 
of  an  outdoor  composition  with  trees  and  flowers.  Such  structures 
should  have  some  pleasing  irregularity  of  form  and  color  in  their  sur- 
face and  some  possibility  of  accumulating  moss  and  lichens,  and  grow- 
ing old  gracefully  with  the  rest  of  the  design. 

The  choice  of  local  material  in  stonework  may  give  harmony  of  Color  of 

color,  as  well  as  harmony  of  texture,  between  the  stonework  and  any  Buildings  m 

',,  ,.,  •'  .'  ..  T,  Relation  to 

natural  ledge  which  may  appear  m  the  composition,     ror  the  most  Landscape 

part,  however,  the  color  of  our  structures  is  determined  by  our  choice 

of  brick,  by  our  choice  of  a  stain  for  cement  and  stucco,  and  by  our 

choice  of  color  in  paint.     Fortunately  for  the  American  landscape,  the 

colors  which  are  usual  in  brick  and  stucco  and  cement  are  on  the  whole 

the  more  subdued  colors.     No  such  restriction,  however,  is  set  upon 

house-painters,  and,  although  the  worst  period  of  incongruity  of  violent 

color  between  each  house  and  its  neighbor  and  every  house  and  the 

landscape   is    now  passing,   there   are   still   sins   enough   of   this    kind 

committed  to  make  it  desirable  that  every  landscape  designer  should 

bear  his  witness  against  them.     In  the  color  which  can  be  so  readily 


196 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

obtained  from  paint,  the  designer, has  actually  a  very  powerful  means 
of  unifying  his  design,  of  concealing  defects,  of  accenting  excellences. 
Every  architect  knows  that,  in  a  wooden  house,  good  forms  in  his  build- 
ing mass,  good  arrangements  in  fenestration,  may  be  emphasized  by 
appropriate  painting,  and  that  to  some  extent  unfortunate  arrange- 
ments forced  upon  him  by  the  use  of  the  building  may  be  rendered  less 
noticeable  in  the  same  way.  As  an  object  in  the  landscape,  a  large  and 
ugly  but  unimportant  building  may  be  subdued  by  being  painted  to 
match  its  background ;  a  small  building,  intended  to  serve  as  a  point 
of  interest  but  hardly  large  enough  for  its  task,  may  be  painted  white. 
A  group  of  buildings  may  be  unified  and  shown  to  belong  to  the  same 
scheme,  to  the  same  owner,  by  being  painted  with  the  same  colors. 
The  repetition  of  the  main  architectural  mass  of  the  house  by  out- 
lying buildings  in  the  scheme  may  be  in  this  way  very  successfully 
enhanced.  Under  the  blazing  sun  of  California  or  Florida,  these 
colors  may  be  brilliant  as  they  often  are  in  Spain  and  in  Italy ;  under 
the  grayer  sky  of  New  England,  cream  white,  or  gray  white,  or  gray, 
or  brown,  or  gray  green,  would  be  colors  in  paint  likely  to  be  more  con- 
gruous with  the  rest  of  the  scene,  but  even  there  a  tile  roof  of  a  fairly 
brilliant  red  may  make  a  pleasant  spot  in  the  landscape. 

The  smaller  architectural  structures,  being,  more  commonly  than 
the  larger  buildings,  subordinate  objects  in  the  landscape,  come  more 
completely  in  the  field  of  the  landscape  architect.  Their  essence  and 
individuality  are  usually  architectural,  however,  and  this  should  be  con- 
sidered even  if  the  structure  is  made  solely  for  its  effect  in  a  landscape 
design.  The  structures  which  we  discuss  as  examples  are  only  a  few 
out  of  many,  and  the  considerations  brought  up  are  merely  some  of 
the  broad  relations  of  such  structures  considered  as  units  in  landscape 
composition.* 
Shelters  and  Besides   the  larger  architectural   structures   which   are  commonly 

Pavilions  made  primarily  for  some  economic  use,  and  smaller  buildings  for  serv- 

ice purposes  only,   there  are  a  number  of  lesser  structures  built  pri- 
marily for  enjoyment,  such  as  pavilions,  shelters,  gazebos,  pergolas. 
These  structures  may  have  certain  specific  functions  of  pleasurable 

*  Cf.  also  discussions  of  structures  in  the  garden,  the  estate,  and  in  landscape 
parks,  in  Chapter  XI. 


DravUno  by  A.  B.  LeBmaUtUr 


THE  TEMPLE  OF  LOVE,  VERSAILLES 


XXV 


STRUCTURES    IN    LANDSCAPE 197 

use  in  the  design.  Some  may  dominate  a  view  and  offer  a  protected 
and  shaded  place  from  which  the  view  may  be  enjoyed.  Such  shelters 
were  called  gazebos  in  the  Dutch  and  English  gardens.  Some  shelters 
may  be  so  arranged  that  it  would  be  convenient  to  serve  tea  or  other 
refreshment  in  them.  This  is  likely  to  be  an  incidental  function  on  a 
private  place,  but  in  public  parks  structures  are  often  built  primarily 
for  this  purpose.  Some  structures  offer  a  shaded  passageway  from 
one  part  of  the  design  to  another.  This  is  more  particularly  the  func- 
tion of  the  pergola,  although  in  our  modern  parlance  almost  any  struc- 
ture that  has  an  open  vine-clad  roof  goes  by  this  name.  Some  structures 
may  be  built  to  protect  or  shelter  a  small  object  of  importance.  We 
build  shelters,  for  instance,  over  springs,  or  memorials  of  some  historic 
event,  or  as  protection  for  some  piece  of  sculpture.  In  our  private 
estates,  and  very  commonly  as  well  in  parks,  the  ostensible  fitting  of  a 
structure  to  any  of  these  uses  is  often  merely  a  method  of  giving  it 
an  apparent  function  and  so  making  it  seem  more  necessary  and  there- 
fore more  desirable  and  important  in  the  design.  In  many  cases,  how- 
ever, the  primary  reason  for  the  building  of  one  of  these  structures  is 
that  the  designer  feels  the  esthetic  need  of  an  architectural  object  in 
that  particular  place  in  the  composition.  It  may  repeat  the  architec- 
tural effect  of  the  main  building  and  so  mark  the  limit  of  the  defined 
or  formalized  portion  of  the  scheme ;  for  instance,  a  shelter  may  termi- 
nate a  vista  or  allee  cut  through  woods ;  it  may  lie  on  the  farther  side 
of  an  informal  open  space,  but,  being  on  the  continuation  of  the  main 
axis  of  the  building,  it  may  make  more  apparent  the  axial  relation  of  the 
open  space  to  the  main  structure.  (See  Drawing  XXXI,  opp.  p.  268.) 
Frequently  these  structures  may  be  connected  with  the  walls  of  a 
garden  or  other  inclosed  area,  either  marking  an  important  point, 
usually  an  axial  point,  in  this  wall,  or  perhaps  giving  solidity  to  a  corner. 
In  larger  schemes,  the  pleasure  structure  may  dominate  its  own  sub- 
ordinate portion  of  the  design,  standing  for  instance  at  the  intersection 
of  two  allees  in  a  bosquet,  or  in  a  naturalistic  park  dominating  its  own 
little  glade  in  the  woods.  Fundamentally  these  structures  are  serving 
three  purposes  :  they  mark  out  and  strengthen  the  man-made  scheme, 
—  of  which,  in  a  private  estate,  the  house  is  the  focus ;  they  unify 
the  scheme  by  repetition  of  the  effect  of  the  dominant  architectural 


198 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

mass ;  and  they  may  serve  as  they  are  fitted  to  serve  —  being  archi- 
tectural and  so  necessarily  interesting  objects  —  as  dominant  units  in 
their  own  subordinate  compositions.  (See  Drawing  XXV,  opp.  p.  196.) 
Where  some  actual  or  apparent  use  of  the  pleasure  structure  is  the 
first  consideration  —  shelter  or  shade,  for  instance  —  and  where  no 
considerable  architectural  effect  is  desired,  as  often  in  a  naturalistic 
design,  the  shelter  may  be  made  very  much  a  part  of  its  wilder  sur- 
roundings. (See  Drawing  XXVI,  opposite.)  The  roof  may  be  thatched, 
the  supporting  posts  left  rough,  or  even  with  the  bark  on ;  the  whole 
structure  may  be  covered  and  concealed  with  vines.  A  greater  de- 
parture from  architectural  form  is  permissible  in  such  shelters,  because 
they  have  an  unimportant  and  somewhat  temporary  look,  and  a  light- 
ness of  imaginative  touch  is  not  out  of  place  in  their  design ;  to  some 
extent  this  is  true  too  of  more  architectural  forms.  Many  of  the  lattice- 
work shelters  of  the  French  gardens  are  frankly  stage  scenery  or  at  any 
rate  flights  of  irresponsible  fancy,  and,  in  their  place,  they  are  for  that 
very  reason  a  needed  factor  in  the  formal  design  as  a  whole. 
Terraces  ^^  his  articulation  of  the  area-units  of  a  formal  scheme,  the  terrace 

offers  to  the  landscape  designer  opportunities  of  arrangement  provided 
by  no  other  form.  It  is  in  itself  a  definite  and  segregated  unit,  but  it  is 
segregated  without  being  entirely  inclosed.  Its  retaining  wall  or  bank 
is  a  boundary  between  it  and  the  adjacent  area,  but  from  its  greater 
elevation  the  terrace  commands  a  view  over  at  least  the  adjacent  area 
and  perhaps  much  farther  afield.  A  terrace  is  in  its  effect  an  architec- 
tural object  of  simple  shape,  and  is  particularly  fitted  to  serve  as  a  base 
to  structures  of  still  greater  architectural  interest.  Accordingly  a 
terrace  often  serves  as  a  base  for  a  building,  and  as  an  outdoor  area 
dominating  a  view.  It  should  normally  have  a  definite  boundary 
on  all  sides.  If  the  terrace  runs  completely  around  a  building,  or, 
what  is  much  more  commonly  the  case  and  more  usually  desirable, 
if  it  stops  against  a  projecting  wing  or  wall,  it  is  thus  given  com- 
pleteness of  form.  The  proportions  of  a  terrace  on  which  a  building 
stands  will  usually  be  determined  by  the  three  functions  which  we 
have  mentioned.  Its  surface  will  be  proportioned  to  the  mass  of  the 
building,  and  to  such  uses  as  are  actually  made  of  it,  as  parterre,  or 
tea-terrace,  or  whatever  else.     Its  width  will  further  be  fixed  by  how 


STRUCTURES    IN    LANDSCAPE  199 

its  outer  line  relates  to  the  view  beyond,  not  concealing  too  much  or 
intruding  a  too  formal  foreground.  Its  height  above  the  surface  below 
will  be  motived  by  the  relations  of  its  bank  or  retaining  wall  —  perhaps 
with  its  steps  or  niches  or  other  decorations  as  the  case  may  be  —  to  the 
composition  offered  in  a  view  towards  the  building,  by  its  proportions 
for  itself,  and  by  its  relation  as  a  base  to  the  building.  A  series  of 
terraces  running  down  a  hillside  should  have  adequate  termination, 
both  at  the  ends  of  each  separate  terrace  and  at  the  bottom  of  the 
scheme.  The  relative  shapes  of  such  terraces  should  be  carefully 
studied  so  that  their  successive  surfaces  may  be  seen  in  pleasant  pro- 
portion from  above  and  their  successive  walls  may  surmount  one  an- 
other in  pleasant  relation  as  seen  from  below,  and  culminate  effectively 
in  the  dominating  structure.  For  these  purposes  an  ideal  arrangement 
of  terraces  would  be  one  in  which  the  upper  terrace  next  the  building 
was  narrow  and  high,  and  the  height  of  the  successive  terraces  decreased 
and  their  width  increased  to  the  terrace  at  the  foot  of  the  series,  which 
might  be  broad  and  low.  In  formal  arrangements  of  the  ground  like 
those  in  a  formal  garden,  importance  may  be  given  to  one  part  of  an 
area  by  arranging  it  as  a  terrace,  as  for  instance  where  one  end  of  a 
garden  is  so  treated  and  a  banqueting  house  or  shelter  built  on  such  an 
elevation.  Or  the  concavity  of  the  whole  form  of  a  garden  may  be 
accented  by  a  slight  terrace  running  all  the  way  around  it. 

Since  people  will,  if  it  is  possible,  invariably  come  to  the  very  edge  Parapets 
of  any  elevation  on  which  they  stand  to  enjoy  a  view,  there  should 
usually  be  a  path  along  the  outer  edge  of  the  terrace,  and,  if  the  fall 
be  at  all  considerable,  a  parapet  of  some  kind  on  which  the  visitor  may 
lean.  If  the  design  requires  it,  this  parapet  need  be  no  more  than  knee 
high,  but  it  will  still  be  effective  if  it  be  broad  enough.  At  the  head  of 
the  curving  flight  of  steps  above  the  tapis  vert  at  Versailles,  where  a 
parapet  would  have  been  undesirable  on  account  of  the  view  towards 
the  chateau,  the  safety  of  spectators  is  practically  assured  by  an  ever- 
green hedge  planted  on  the  lower  level,  with  its  broad  top,  trimmed  flat, 
reaching  to  the  upper  level.  A  terrace  parapet  can  hardly  exceed  a 
height  comfortable  to  rest  the  elbows  on  without  seeming  out  of  scale 
with  the  size  of  a  man.  The  question  of  the  construction  of  the  parapet 
—  balustrade,  pierced  wall,  post  and  panel,  or  whatever  else  of  all  the 


200 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Retaining 
fValls 


Terrace 
Banks 


possible  alternatives  may  be  chosen  —  is  one  of  architectural  detail 
which  we  cannot  cover  here. 

The  most  definite  and  architectural  form  of  terrace  is  produced  by 
a  retaining  wall  crowned  with  a  properly  proportioned  balustrade  and 
perhaps  paneled  with  piers  or  buttresses.  Especially  where  this  wall 
is  not  very  high,  the  proportion  between  the  wall  and  the  parapet  be- 
comes a  matter  of  great  importance.  If  these  proportions,  as  they  are 
forced  upon  the  designer  by  the  normal  height  of  a  balustrade  and  the 
necessary  difference  in  elevation  of  the  ground,  are  not  satisfactory, 
they  may  be  improved  to  some  extent  by  a  judicious  choice  of  the  height 
of  the  base-course  for  the  wall  or  of  the  crowning  course  on  which  the 
base  of  the  parapet  is  set.  If  no  solid  parapet  and  no  stone  balustrade 
can  be  arranged  in  good  proportion,  it  may  still  be  possible  to  construct 
a  light  Iron  grille-work  which  will  serve  all  purposes  of  safety  without 
assuming  importance  in  the  design  of  the  wall,  and  without  intruding 
on  the  view  from  the  terrace  itself. 

Where  there  is  a  possibility  that  a  long  straight  run  of  terrace  wall 
may  prove  monotonous,  it  may  be  broken  by  projections  which  offer 
particularly  good  viewpoints  and  which  serve  some  subordinate  pur- 
pose of  their  own  as  objects  in  the  design.  The  face  of  a  terrace 
wall  is  almost  always  broken  by  steps  at  some  place,  and  indeed  the 
case  seldom  arises  where  the  designer  cannot  obtain  sufficient  variety 
of  shape  in  a  terrace  by  recognizing  local  requirements,  and  this  with- 
out appearing  to  have  willfully  distorted  the  shape  of  the  structure. 
A  terrace  wall  is  an  ideal  backing  and  protection  for  herbaceous 
planting,  as  can  be  seen  in  many  examples  of  the  English  borders. 

Where,  for  reasons  of  economy  or  design,  it  is  undesirable  to  sup- 
port a  terrace  by  a  vertical  retaining  wall,  a  sloping  bank  may  be  used 
with  its  surface  held  in  place  by  turf  or  possibly  by  other  planting.  If 
the  terrace  is  to  retain  its  architectural  character,  some  fine-textured 
covering  material  like  turf  will  be  essential,  in  order  that  the  surfaces 
and  lines  of  the  bank  may  remain  sufficiently  defined.  From  the 
practical  point  of  view,  the  slope  will  be  determined  by  the  angle  of 
repose  of  the  material  and  by  the  possibility  of  cutting  the  grass  :  a 
slope  steeper  than  forty-five  degrees  is  likely  to  be  hard  to  maintain.* 
*  Cf.  Natural  banks,  Chapter  VIII,  p.  148. 


STRUCTURES    IN    LANDSCAPE  201 

From  the  point  of  view  of  appearance,  the  big  general  mass  relations 
of  the  scheme  will  have  the  preponderant  influence,  but  an  important 
minor  consideration  is  the  parallelism  between  the  surface  of  the  bank 
and  any  flight  of  steps  which  may  lie  upon  it.  This  would  give  the 
bank  a  slope  of  about  one  on  two.  The  turf  terrace  bank  has  perhaps 
its  best  use  where  different  levels  are  to  be  individually  defined,  but  still 
very  definitely  recognized  as  parts  of  one  larger  open  area.  Planting  at 
the  top  of  such  slopes  may  be  desirable  and  can  be  effective ;  even 
architectural  balustrading  at  such  a  place  is  occasionally  good.  Plant- 
ing directly  at  the  bottom  of  these  slopes  is,  however,  extremely  hard 
to  manage  :  the  slope  itself,  as  we  have  seen,  cannot  readily  be  planted, 
and  if  it  be  kept  in  turf,  it  makes  an  open  space  behind  planting  at  its 
foot  which  is  likely  to  make  this  planting  appear  as  if  it  had  insufficient 
background. 

Steps  leading  from  one  level  to  another  in  a  landscape  design  are.  Steps 
like  gateways,  objects  which  have  or  seem  to  have  an  economic  use, 
and  so  a  certain  feeling  of  inevitableness  in  the  scheme,  but  which  are 
also  extremely  desirable  objects  in  the  esthetic  design.  They  diversify 
and  enrich  the  walls  or  banks  of  terraces  ;  they  lie  naturally  as  terminal 
objects  and  vista  points  to  walk  towards,  and  centers  of  pictorial  com- 
positions to  look  at.  From  the  necessary  relation  of  the  riser  and 
tread  of  their  steps*  and  the  relation  of  the  height  of  their  balus- 
trades to  the  height  of  a  man,  they  introduce  an  element  of  human 
scale  into  the  composition  and  a  pleasant  suggestion  of  human  use. 

Flights  of  steps  are  often  more  effective  when  supported  by  larger  Steps  in 
objects.  They  may  run  down  by  the  side  of  a  projecting  building  or  ^<"''"<''  Design 
retaining  wall,  agreeably  filling  in  and  softening  what  might  be  other- 
wise a  harsh  angle.  They  may,  however,  themselves  assume  dominant 
importance  in  a  view,  forming  architectural  objects  of  almost  any 
degree  of  interest  and  complication.  When  steps  are  treated  as 
important  objects  in  this  way,  two  interrelated  considerations  are 
likely  to  be  paramount :  their  architectural  form  and  the  directions 
of  traffic  and  views  to  and  from  them.  Where  the  line  of  traffic  and 
view  is  continued  unchanged  beyond  the  steps  in  each  direction,  or 

*  See  article  by  F.  L.  Olmsted,  Jr.,  Notes  upon  the  Sizes  of  Steps  required  for  Com- 
fort, with  diagram,  in  Landscape  Architecture,  Jan.  191 1,  vol.  i,  p.  84-90. 


202 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

where  the  traffic  is  turned  abruptly  at  the  foot  of  the  steps,  or  the 
traffic  and  the  view  stop  short  or  turn  abruptly  at  the  top,  a  single 
straight  flight  of  steps  will  probably  be  constructed.  There  will  be  a 
tendency  to  make  the  width  of  the  flight  of  steps  equal  to  the  width 
of  the  path  which  approaches  them,  but  considerations  of  the  total 
mass  of  the  flight  as  an  object  in  the  design  will  enter  here,  and  if  it  be 
not  very  high,  it  may  for  this  reason  be  made  wider.  Or  the  mass  may 
be  considerably  increased  by  posts,  balustrades,  ramps,  or  projecting 
bases  for  flower  pots  at  the  sides  of  the  steps.  If  the  steps  lie  in  a  turf 
bank,  it  is  usually  desirable  to  have  the  line  of  the  nosings  of  the  steps 
lie  in  the  plane  of  the  bank  or  at  least  be  parallel  to  it.  Balustrades 
on  such  steps  are  not  practically  necessary  and  are  usually  not  esthet- 
ically  desirable.  A  low  ramp  paralleling  the  slope  of  the  bank,  or 
perhaps  a  stepped  ramp  is  more  likely  to  be  congruous  with  the  shape 
of  the  bank. 

Where  a  single  flight  of  steps  leads  to  an  open  panel  below  or  to 
walks  that  go  in  several  directions,  the  steps,  or  at  least  the  lower  part 
of  the  steps,  may  well  recognize  this  dispersion  of  traffic  by  a  rounded 
or  splaying  form.  Such  a  form  has  an  obvious  esthetic  advantage  in 
design,  since  the  broader  lower  steps  give  a  pleasing  base  to  the  whole 
flight  and  lead  the  eye  agreeably  from  the  rising  line  to  the  horizontal 
surface  below ;  but  nevertheless  such  forms  should  be  used  only  with 
great  care  unless  the  lower  area  to  which  the  steps  lead  has  considerable 
openness  and  expanse  to  right  and  left  of  the  steps. 

One  line  of  traffic  below  may  be  spread  into  two  lines  above  by 
balanced  flights  of  steps  rising  to  right  and  left.  Such  an  arrangement 
almost  necessitates  something  —  niche,  fountain,  or  similar  feature  — 
in  the  wall  between  the  steps  at  the  lower  level,  terminating  the  single 
lower  path  and  enframed  by  the  balanced  flights  of  steps.  This  ar- 
rangement is  usually  best  when  it  is  sunk  into  the  face  of  the  retaining 
wall,  rather  than  when  the  landings  at  the  tops  of  the  two  flights  of 
steps  form  projecting  bastions. 

Two  lines  of  traffic  below  may  be  collected  into  one  line  above 
often  by  two  balanced  flights  of  steps  applied  as  it  were  to  the  outside 
of  the  retaining  wall  and  projecting  above  in  a  bastion  for  the  top  land- 
ing, or  by  two  flights  of  steps,  usually  curving,  sunk  into  the  body  of 


SOME  TVPIGALFOPMS  OFSTEPS 


JTER5  51 DEVAU.  PARALLEL 

eeSIDt  QUILDLNG        TD  NOSViC^i  OF  STEPi 


L£)WCt;R.SR3R.3rEr5  jrtPPtD  WALL. 


5TER5  CONTlNULMCE^THy'OaS 
-ASOV^AND  BElOWrrRKACE. 


IlEMLJIiyiU 


RECo<imTlOH  or  piaPER^AL  or  tR'Sttic  below  rtRRACE 


DR-'WVIXG  XXVII 


STRUCTURES    IN    LANDSCAPE 


203 


the  terrace  and  enframing  a  fountain  or  pool  at  the  lower  level.  In 
the  case  of  the  re-entrant  steps,  the  portion  of  the  retaining  wall  in- 
closed by  them  would  almost  certainly  be  decorated  by  niche  or  foun- 
tain or  statue.  And  the  wall  which  supports  the  landing  at  the  head 
of  the  projecting  steps  may  be  given  additional  interest  in  a  similar 
way.  The  upper  landing,  particularly  when  it  projects,  is  likely  to 
be  a  point  commanding  a  view.  The  fact  that  there  is  usually  a  view 
down  the  whole  axis  makes  it  often  desirable  to  depress  this  upper 
landing,  so  that  its  outer  balustrade  may  not  interrupt  the  view  more 
than  is  necessary.  It  is  also  possible,  as  in  the  case  of  the  Dragon 
Fountain  at  the  Villa  d'  Este,  for  a  single  axial  path  to  come  to  a  foun- 
tain feature  backed  by  a  retaining  wall  and,  going  around  it  by  sym- 
metrical enframing  flights  of  steps,  proceed  above  still  as  a  single  axial 
path. 

A  path  at  one  level  may  be,  for  purposes  of  design,  carried  on  at 
another  level  with  its  direction  parallel  but  not  continuous.  A  single 
flight  of  steps  running  parallel  to  the  face  of  the  retaining  wall  may 
satisfactorily  make  the  bayonet  joint  between  the  two  paths.  Such 
an  arrangement  however  is  hard  to  manage  if  the  axial  relation  of  the 
lower  path  is  important ;  it  is  more  readily  done  where  the  lower  path 
lies  on  the  outside  of  a  terrace  or  for  other  reasons  does  not  have  to  be 
axially  treated. 

There  are  of  course  endless  other  possibilities  in  the  design  of  steps 
as  architectural  objects ;  this  discussion  is  intended  to  point  out  only 
some  of  the  most  obvious  examples.     (See  Drawing  XXVII,  opp.  p.  202.) 

In  informal  and  naturalistic  landscapes,  the  design  of  steps  will  be  Steps  in 
more  obviously  motived  by  their  use,  though  they  are  still  important  ^'^t^^'^^^^t^c 
in  the  esthetic  composition.  They  should  usually  seem  to  be  fitted 
to  the  topography  with  as  little  disturbance  and  difficulty  as  possible ; 
they  should  almost  always  be  sunk  into  the  bank  rather  than  protruding 
from  it,  and  they  should  very  rarely  He  unsupported  on  an  open  bank, 
but  rather  should  be  enframed  with  shrubs,  overarched  with  trees,  or 
should  run  along  the  side  of  a  projecting  ledge.  Flights  of  steps  are 
bound  to  be  conspicuous  objects  on  an  informal  path ;  they  should 
therefore  be  seized  upon  to  be  made  interesting  incidents,  —  they  should, 
that  is,  be  enframed,  supported,  made  a  part  of  a  harmonious  composi- 


204 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

tion  with  their  surroundings.  Whether  the  flight  of  steps  shall  appear 
as  an  architectural  object,  dominant  in  its  own  small  composition,  or 
whether  the  steps  shall  be  as  little  obviously  man-made  as  possible 
consistently  with  their  use  as  steps,  will  be  a  question  decided  by  the 
degree  of  approximation  to  natural  effect  which  the  designer  considers 
to  be  necessary  in  a  particular  case. 

Where  the  steps  must  be,  for  their  proper  use,  obviously  man-made 
masonry,  they  would  best  be  good  masonry.  It  is  a  mistake,  in  a 
structure  which  is  plainly  a  flight  of  steps,  for  the  sake  of  an  unat- 
tainable "naturalness"  to  make  the  risers  and  treads  of  different  sizes 
on  different  steps  and  to  make  the  surface  of  the  steps  dangerously 
rough.  Good,  practical  steps  may  still  be  well  related  to  a  natural 
landscape  by  their  color,  by  their  texture,  by  pleasant  harmony  of 
form,  and  by  being  enframed  and  decorated  by  foliage.  (See  Plate  34.) 
Walls  and  Besides  their  obvious  economic  uses,  walls  and  fences  are  in  a  sense 

Fences  one    indispensable    esthetic    element    in    formal    landscape    design,    as 

boundary  plantations  are  in  informal  and  naturalistic  landscape.* 
They  segregate  unit  from  unit ;  they  mark  the  articulation  of  the  scheme 
into  separate  functional  areas,  without  which  there  can  be  no  efi"ective 
design. 

The  height  of  a  free-standing  wall  or  a  fence  will  be  determined 
first  by  the  amount  of  interruption  to  the  view  which  it  is  designed 
to  create.  If  it  is  desired  that  the  view  shall  be  in  effect  confined  to 
the  area  inclosed,  then  the  wall  or  fence  should  be  somewhat  higher 
than  the  eye.f  It  is  worth  noting  that  a  formal  screen  only  just  as 
high  as  the  eye  is  likely  to  be  an  annoyance,  since  it  neither  conceals 
nor  reveals  what  is  behind  it.  If  the  intention  is  to  define  an  area, 
but  to  allow  the  view  to  pass  over  outside  areas  as  well,  then  a  wall  or 
fence  considerably  lower  than  the  eye  may  be  the  most  desirable  struc- 
ture to  use.  Another  esthetic  consideration  tending  to  determine  the 
height  of  a  wall  or  fence  is  its  proportion  as  an  object  in  composition. 
A  very  low  wall  is  likely  to  look  better  than  a  very  low  fence,  since  the 
thickness  of  the  wall  still  gives  it  sufficient  mass,  whereas  the  low  fence 
is  apt  to  look  dwarfed  and  out  of  scale  with  the  rest  of  the  design. 
A  wall  surrounding  a  very  large  area  often  must  be  tall  merely  as  a 
*  Cf.  Chapter  IX,  p.  167.  t  Ci.  Chapter  VII,  p.  128. 


STRUCTURES    IN    LANDSCAPE  205 

matter  of  scale  relation.  A  lattice  fence  springing  from  the  side  of  a 
large  house  would  probably  be  tall,  for  some  distance  at  least,  for  the 
same  reason.  Sometimes  it  is  desirable  to  design  walls  and  fences  so 
that  though  they  give  sufficient  inclosure,  they  are  not  in  themselves 
conspicuous,  being  clothed  with  planting  or  perhaps  even  themselves 
built  with  irregular  forms  which  differentiate  them  as  little  as  possible 
from  natural  objects  behind  them,  and  enable  them  to  serve  as  an  in- 
conspicuous background  for  interesting  objects  which  they  inclose. 
More  frequently,  walls  and  fences,  when  parts  of  a  formal  scheme,  should 
be  treated  as  architectural  objects,  which  they  are  essentially.  Their 
top  should  be  horizontal  in  effect,  although  it  may  be  enriched  by  the 
repeated  subordinate  breaks  in  outline  of  post  and  panel ;  and  if  it  is 
necessary  to  have  this  top  line  at  different  elevations  at  diiferent  places 
in  its  length,  the  break  from  one  level  to  another  should  be  made  in  a 
proper  architectural  manner. 

Some  kind  of  coping  is  almost  always  desirable  for  a  wall,  both  for  Walls  : 
the  consideration  of  protecting  the  masonry  from  water  and  for  the  ^''''^^"^/^^^"'^ 
esthetic  consideration  of  giving  the  wall  a  crowning  member  and  recog- 
nizing the  important  horizontal  line  of  its  top.  Similarly,  a  projection 
of  the  masonry  at  the  bottom  will  give  the  wall  greater  apparent  sta- 
bility, and,  properly  proportioned,  will  form  the  lower  of  the  three 
normal  architectural  elements  for  such  structures  :  —  base,  wall-sur- 
face, cap.  If  there  is  danger  of  too  great  uninterrupted  expanse  of 
wall-surface,  this  may  be  broken  up  by  piers  or  buttresses. 

In  texture,  the  material  available  in  masonry  gives  almost  endless 
opportunity  of  variety  and  beauty.  Where  the  effect  justifies  the 
expense,  the  wall  may  have  all  the  beauty  of  smoothly  dressed  stone, 
and  of  justly-proportioned  and  finely  wrought  moldings,  and  even 
decorative  carving.  -  Similar  results  may  be  obtained  at  less  expense 
in  cement  concrete :  simpler  forms  not  requiring  sharpness  and  ac- 
curacy of  edge  may  be  obtained  by  casting  the  concrete  in  a  mold 
and  improving  the  surface  texture  after  the  mold  is  removed  by 
scrubbing  or  dissolving  away  some  of  the  finer  material  and  allowing 
some  of  the  particles  of  the  aggregate  to  show  as  a  granular  surface. 
If  material  for  the  aggregate  be  chosen  of  the  same  hardness  as  that  of 
the  cement,  it  is  possible  to  improve  greatly  the  definition  of  the  cast 


2o6 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

forms  by  subsequent  chisel-work.  In  many  cases  the  crispness  of  form 
so  obtained  is  sufficient  for  the  purpose  which  the  wall  serves  in  the 
design,  but  it  has  riot  yet  proved  commercially  possible  to  produce 
more  cheaply  in  this  way  as  delicate  results  as  may  be  done  in  cut  stone. 
Somewhat  the  eifect  of  a  concrete  wall  may  be  produced  even  more 
cheaply  by  the  use  of  cement  stucco  on  expanded  metal  lath  or  some 
other  similar  material  attached  to  wooden  supports  or  perhaps  to 
supports  of  structural  steel.  Such  an  arrangement  has  the  advantage 
of  lightness,  cheapness,  and  rapidity  of  construction,  but  is  not  in  any 
other  respect  as  desirable  as  cement  or  stone.  These  architectural  and 
sculptural  forms  may  be  obtained  also,  more  cheaply  than  in  cut  stone, 
in  brick  and  in  terra-cotta,  with  the  addition  of  the  natural  texture  of 
the  material  and  of  the  texture  given  to  the  whole  work  by  the  mortar 
joints  between  the  separate  blocks.  Where  the  whole  texture  of  the 
design  is  still  larger  and  looser,  or  where  the  wall  is  intended  to  call 
less  attention  to  itself,  the  surface  decoration  of  the  wall  may  be  the 
more  fortuitous  one  of  good  brickwork  or  good  rough  stonework,  in 
which  there  are  as  many  possibilities  as  there  are  different  available 
materials  and  effective  methods  of  brick-laying  and  stone-laying.  The 
designer  should  remember,  however,  that  where  the  wall  is  being 
treated  as  a  structure,  it  should  be  built  structurally :  it  should  not,  on 
the  one  hand,  for  the  sake  of  surface  decoration,  sacrifice  the  apparent 
strength  of  base  and  wall  and  cap  to  decorative  designs  in  brick  or  tile, 
nor,  on  the  other  hand,  for  the  sake  of  interest  in  texture  and  decora- 
tion by  planting,  degenerate  from  a  good  job  of  masonry  into  a  stone- 
pile. 

Where  the  definite  form  of  the  wall  is  not  to  be  insisted  on,  or  some- 
times in  the  panels  between  the  piers  of  an  architectural  wall,  the 
texture  of  vegetation  may  be  substituted  for  that  of  stonework  by  the 
growth  of  vines  hanging  from  above,  espalier  trees  fastened  to  the  sur- 
face, or  closely  clinging  vines  growing  from  the  bottom  and  entirely 
concealing  the  wall.  Still  more  diversity  and  interest  may  be  given 
to  walls  of  these  general  characters  by  arranging,  during  their  con- 
struction, pockets  filled  with  loam  which  may  be  properly  watered  and 
in  which  rock-loving  flowering  plants  may  be  set  out,  decorating  the 
wall-surface   with    masses   of   bloom.     Such    an   arrangement   among 


STRUCTURES     IN    LANDSCAPE 207 

structures  finds  a  very  close  relative  in  the  rock  garden  of  naturalistic 
design  *  and  indeed  in  many  interesting  examples,  one  merges  into  the 
other  by  almost  imperceptible  degrees.  Even  in  this  case,  however,  the 
general  rule  is  likely  to  hold  that  it  is  better  to  have  the  work  either 
recognizably  a  structure  or  recognizably  an  attempted  suggestion  of 
natural  beauty. 

Some  walls  are  built  —  on  New  England  farm  land,  for  instance  — 
from  the  stones  obtained  by  clearing  the  land,  primarily  to  separate 
one  field  from  another  and  with  no  thought  of  appearance  except  as  a 
workmanlike  job.  When  they  have  been  toned  by  the  weather  and 
overgrown  with  bushes  and  vines,  they  blend  so  thoroughly  with  the  , 

landscape  that  we  come  to  look  upon  them  almost  as  parts  of  the  free 
landscape  rather  than  as  architectural  structures.  (See  Plate  9.)t 
A  similar  effect  of  "naturalness"  is  produced  by  the  New  England 
post-and-rail  fence  and  by  the  "snake"  fence  of  Virginia. 

A  fence  may  be,  like  a  wall,  a  solid  screen  of  any  height  that  the  Fences, 
designer  chooses.-  Fences  built  of  vertical  boards  fastened  close  to-  r,'^'}.^^^^  ^ 
gether  to  horizontal  stringers  which  are  upheld  by  vertical  posts  are 
those  most  commonly  used  in  this  way.  In  their  large  relations,  they 
are  subject  to  many  of  the  same  considerations  as  are  walls,  and  they 
may  be  treated  with  a  cap  and  base  molding  like  a  wall ;  but  on  ac- 
count of  the  method  of  their  construction  it  is  often  better  to  recognize 
the  posts  and  panels  by  some  variation  in  the  top  line,  by  some  differ- 
ence in  the  construction  and  spacing  of  the  boarding,  and  to  depend 
for  further  interest  of  texture  on  the  repeated  vertical  lines  of  boards 
and  interstices.  More  commonly,  the  construction  of  a  fence  is  such 
that,  although  it  serves  as  a  definite  boundary,  still  the  view  passes 
through  it.  Sometimes  it  is  desirable  that  the  area  on  the  other  side 
should  be  thus  seen  or  guessed  at  through  the  substance  of  the  fence. 
More  often  a  planting  immediately  behind  the  fence  furnishes  the 
solidity  which  the  fence  lacks.  In  either  case  the  effect  of  the  fence 
itself  will  be  largely  dependent  upon  the  pattern  which  it  makes  against 
the  distance  or  the  background  of  planting. 

Growing  from  the  reasonable  and  ordinary  mode  of  constructing 

*Cf.  Chapter  VIII,  p.  143. 

t  Cf.  Chapter  V,  New  England  Bushy  Pasture  character,  p.  68. 


2o8 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

a  wooden  fence  with  posts  and  stringers  and  pickets,  we  have  an  end- 
less variety  of  fences  of  open  palings,  different  in  their  size  and  scale 
and  the  spacing  of  their  parts  according  to  the  design  of  which  they 
form  an  element,  alike  only  in  that  they  consist  of  a  series  of  vertical 
palings,  grouped  into  panels  between  the  sturdier  and  supporting  posts. 
Based  on  essentially  the  same  method  of  construction,  we  have  many 
varieties  of  lattice  fence,  usually  higher  fences,  particularly  those  used 
for  screens,  with  or  without  vines.  Here  the  panels  between  the  posts 
are  filled  with  a  grille-work  of  wooden  strips  —  vertical  and  horizontal, 
diagonal,  or  forming  some  more  complicated  pattern  —  which  owe 
their  strength  to  being  fastened  together  at  their  intersections.  Prop- 
erly constructed  and  painted,  such  lattice  work,  though  lighter,  is 
about  as  strong  and  durable  as  any  other  wooden  fence  of  the  same 
height.  In  its  simpler  forms,  it  has  the  advantage  of  offering  a  con- 
sistent but  interesting  texture  over  a  considerable  area.  If  the  lattice- 
work Is  fine,  a  mesh  of  four  inches  or  so,  it  serves  practically  as  an  im- 
penetrable screen  when  seen  from  any  distance.  It  makes  an  excellent 
trellis  for  vines,  and  when  designed  to  be  so  used  can  be  constructed 
of  a  much  larger  mesh,  the  solid  screen  being  finally  furnished  by  the 
foliage  of  the  vine. 

For  their  preservation  wooden  fences  are  usually  painted  or  stained. 
The  wide  range  of  color  so  offered  to  the  designer  gives  him  considerable 
power  to  modify  the  effect  of  the  fence  in  his  design.  He  may  make  it 
blend  almost  absolutely  with  the  foliage  background  by  painting  it 
green ;  he  may  make  it  very  important  in  the  design  by  painting  it 
white.  He  may  accent  the  unity  of  the  various  architectural  struc- 
tures by  painting  buildings  and  fences  with  the  same  scheme  of  color. 

For  more  permanent  and  important  fences,  the  posts  may  be  of 
brick  or  stone,  perhaps  set  on  a  curb  or  connected  by  a  low  wall,  and 
the  panels  may  be  of  wooden  or  iron  grille.  The  Iron  grille-work,  like 
the  wooden  picket,  may  consist  of  a  series  of  vertical  members  held 
together  by  horizontal  stringers,  or  exceptionally  of  a  lattice  of  inter- 
woven or  superposed  iron  strap-work ;  but  more  commonly  the  mal- 
leability of  the  iron  leads  the  designer  to  employ  curved  forms  and 
interlacing  patterns  of  all  degrees  of  intricacy,  from  a  simple  series  of 
circles  between  vertical  iron  pickets  to  the  elaborate  floreated  designs 


STRUCTURES    IN    LANDSCAPE 209 

of  Jean  Lamour  of  Nancy.  The  wooden  grille-work,  naturally  more 
massive  than  the  iron  on  account  of  the  weakness  of  its  material,  is 
almost  always  painted,  and  as  it  can  be  painted  a  light  color,  it  can  be 
cleanly  revealed  against  a  background  of  nearby  planting.  The  iron- 
work, on  the  other  hand,  is  dark  in  color  and  can  seldom  with  propriety 
be  painted  a  light  hue.  Ironwork,  therefore,  to  be  well  seen,  must  be 
revealed  against  a  lighter  background,  either  against  distant  objects  or 
against  the  sky,  and  this  fact  must  be  remembered  in  designing  the 
ironwork.  A  design  which  seems  to  have  ample  weight  when  shown 
on  the  drafting-board  will  often  appear  pitifully  weak  when  seen  up- 
held against  the  dazzling  background  of  the  sky.  The  designer  should 
note  also  that  wrought  ironwork  is  fitted  to  give  the  beauty  of  curve, 
of  intricate  interlacing,  but  not  to  give  the  solidity  of  mass.  It  is 
emphatically  in  its  place,  then,  where  it  fills  a  panel  in  a  fence  or  an 
opening  in  a  gate,  but  if  it  is  to  be  used  in  itself  as  a  post  or  as  an  arch, 
it  must  be  heavy  in  form  if  it  is  not  to  run  the  risk  of  appearing  flimsy 
and  insufficient. 

The  landscape  designer  finds  gateways  among  the  most  important  Gateways  and 
of  the  smaller  objects  with  which  he  deals  in  his  compositions.  (See  ^^^^^ 
Drawing  XIII,  opp.  p.  100,  and  Tailpiece  on  p.  23.)  They  mark  a  point 
of  passage  from  one  unit  of  the  scheme  to  another  :  they  are  objects  to 
which  people  go,  and  they  are  inevitably  focal  points  of  attention  in  a 
number  of  diiferent  views.  In  formal  design,  they  are  the  terminal 
points  for  the  vistas  created  by  the  paths  which  run  towards  them  and 
they  are  points  of  importance  and  interest  in  the  walls  or  fences  in 
which  they  are  set.  The  size  of  their  openings  will  first  of  all  be  pro- 
portioned to  the  amount  and  size  of  traffic  which  they  are  designed  to 
accommodate ;  a  gate  on  a  small  footpath  may  be  three  feet  wide,  a 
carriage  gate  ten  feet  wide  or  more.  The  size  of  the  whole  structure 
will  be  proportioned  to  its  importance  in  the  design  :  the  main  carriage 
entrance  to  an  estate  may  be  an  imposing  feature,  while  the  service 
entrance  will  probably  be  inconspicuous.  The  gate  at  the  end  of  the 
main  axis  of  the  lower  garden  at  the  Villa  Lante  is  a  considerable  struc- 
ture although  it  probably  was  never  frequently  used  as  a  means  of 
access.  The  size  of  a  gateway  should  bear  some  relation  to  the  height 
of  the  barrier  in  which  it  is  set.     Purely  from  the  point  of  view  of  com- 


2IO LANDSCAPE-   DESIGN 

position  there  must  exist  a  more  or  less  definite  relation  between  the 
opening  and  the  arch  or  lintel  over  it,  if  there  be  one,  and  the  height 
of  the  adjoining  wall.  From  the  point  of  view  of  obvious  fitness  to 
use,  it  is  evident  that  a  massive  gate  and  gateway  is  unsuitable  in  a 
barrier  so  low  that  it  might  appear  to  be  easier  to  go  over  the  barrier 
than  through  the  gate.  Also  a  solid  gate  is  seldom  desirable  in  an  open- 
work fence.  A  gateway  for  foot  traffic  is  given  much  additional  dignity 
if  it  may  stand  at  the  head  of  a  flight  of  steps.  A  gateway  standing 
at  the  foot  of  a  flight  of  steps,  however  effective  it  may  be  as  seen  from 
the  lower  level,  is  almost  certainly  ineffective  as  seen  from  above, 
since  its  lower  portion  is  cut  off  by  the  ground. 

The  gate  which  closes  a  gateway  may  be  of  solid  boarding,  com- 
pletely cutting  off  the  view,  or  of  wooden  or  iron  grille.  The  open 
grille  is  often  more  desirable  in  a  gate,  even  when  it  is  not  so  in  the 
contiguous  fence,  because  a  gate  necessarily  suggests  the  presence  of 
another  area  beyond,  and  so,  unless  this  area  is  in  some  way  un- 
pleasant, a  glimpse  into  it  through  the  opening  rather  enhances  the 
effect  of  the  gateway.* 
Statuary  The  landscape  architect  has  at  his  command  many  minor  objects 

of  interest  which  he  may  use,  each  in  its  place,  to  mark  the  minor 
centers  of  attraction  which  he  creates  in  his  designs.  In  the  realm 
of  architectural  and  sculptural  forms,  he  has  the  spheres  or  urns  or 
pineapples  or  flames  which  may  serve  as  the  finials  of  the  posts  of  his 
balustrade  or  fence,  or  as  the  crowning  feature  of  the  roof  of  his  sum- 
mer house.  He  has  the  sundials  and  gazing-globes  that  may  mark 
the  intersections  of  paths  in  his  gardens ;  the  vases  which  may  mark 
the  four  corners  of  a  grass-plot  or  formalize  by  their  repeated  definite 
shape  the  walls  of  an  aUee.  Besides  all  these,  and  many  others,  he 
may  call  upon  the  complicated  and  more  powerful  interest  of  statuary. 
A  statue  has  all  the  power  of  exciting  interest  possessed  by  an  architec- 
tural form  like  the  column  or  the  vase  through  its  beauty  of  proportion, 
and  through  the  perfection  of  its  workmanship  and  the  care  which  its 
designer  evidently  lavished  upon  it.  But  beside  all  this,  the  statue 
has  the  added  attraction  of  representing  a  living  form  in  which  every 

*  For  further  descriptions  and  photographs  of  gates  and  gateways  see  Jekyll  and 
Weaver,  Mawson,  and  so  on.     (See  References.) 


STRUCTURES    IN    LANDSCAPE        ari 

man  who  sees  it  must  feel  some  interest  of  kinship.  Having  this 
double  interest,  statuary  is  bound  by  a  double  restriction.  It  must  be 
sufficiently  natural  and  lifelike  to  suggest  the  living  form  and  express 
the  spirit  of  the  being  which  it  represents;  it  must  at  the  same  time 
submit  itself  to  the  rules  of  mass,  of  balance,  of  solidity  and  apparent 
permanence,  —  of  the  general  proportion  of  any  decorative  object  to 
its  base  and  to  its  setting,  —  which  govern  its  forms  as  they  do  the 
forms  of  the  vases  and  sundials  and  the  steps  and  buildings  in  man's 
designs.  A  statue  representing  a  figure  in  an  unbalanced  attitude  gives 
a  feeling  of  unrest  if  one  looks  at  it  for  long.  For  similar  reasons,  many 
persons  object  to  a  statue  which,  though  balanced,  represents  violent 
exertion. 

Because  of  its  greater  fineness  of  workmanship,  because  it  is  usually  Falue  of 
a  more  important  work  of  art,  because  it  has,  besides  its  form,  such  a  ^^^^"-^J  among 
wealth  of  attraction  in  association,  a  statue  in  landscape  design  usually  Objects  in 
takes  the  more  important  place  among  the  minor  decorative  objects.*  Design 
The  general  rules  of  its  mass  relations  in  landscape  design  are  the  same 
which  govern  the  use  of  other  minor  decorative  objects.     It  is  interest- 
ing to  note  that  statuary,  on  account  of  its  added  value  through  repre- 
sentation, is  worthy  to  occupy  the  most  important  place  as  an  object 
in  the  most  formal  designs,  although  it  is  not  itself,  in  any  restricted 
sense,  formal ;  and  so  it  may  at  the  same  time  accent  and  relieve  a 
rigidly  architectural  scheme. 

The  signification,  the  expression,  the  association,  of  statuary  should 
also  be  studied  if  it  is  to  play  its  part  to  the  fullest  degree.  This  goes 
without  saying  in  the  case  of  commemorative  statues  :  one  might  ex- 
pect to  find  the  figure  of  a  warrior  or  of  Victory  as  a  monument  in  a 
battle-field.  Almost  as  surely  should  one  expect  that  a  statue  in  an 
orchard  should  be  of  Pomona  or  some  of  her  mythologic  kin ;  a  statue 
in  a  grove,  a  dryad ;  a  statue  in  a  flower  garden  might  well  represent 
Flora  or  Vertumnus  ;  and  we  are  not  surprised  to  see  Peter  Pan  playing 
his  pipes  in  Kensington  Gardens.  Such  a  statue  of  the  genius  of  the 
place  may  express  and  give  life  and  personality  to  the  eff'ect  which  the 
landscape  architect  is  striving  to  produce  by  his  whole  design.  But 
besides  such  obvious  appropriateness  as  this  of  the  statue  to  its  sur- 
*  See  discussion  of  statuary  in  the  garden,  Chapter  XI,  p.  245. 


212 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Setting  of 
Statuary  in 
Landscape 
Composition 


roundings,  the  designer  must  take  into  account  a  more  general  appro- 
priateness of  effect.  Statues  representing  the  Seasons,  or  Youth,  or 
Love,  or  Joy,  or  Peace,  might  well  find  a  congenial  home  in  a  garden. 
A  statue  of  a  falconer  might  be  appropriately  placed  on  the  edge  of  a 
wood  overlooking  a  park  meadow ;  a  statue  of  a  tigress  might  be  used 
in  the  wild  scenery  of  a  park  which  suggests  the  wilder  scenery  of  the 

jungle. 

Where  a  statue  represents  something  which  might  actually  appear 
in  its  living  shape  in  the  same  setting,  it  is  extremely  important  that 
the  statue  should  be  treated  as  a  representation,  not  as  an  imitation 
of  the  thing  which  it  portrays.  It  should  be  plainly  a  statue,  separate 
from  its  setting  by  being  upon  a  pedestal,  and  probably  so  much  the 
further  removed  from  the  realm  of  actuality  by  being  of  heroic  size. 
Statuary  may  be  perfectly  in  place  in  informal  settings,  but  only  cer- 
tain statuary  is  so.*  First,  as  we  have  before  said,  the  effect  and  sug- 
gestion of  the  statue  must  be  congruous  with  its  location.  Then  its 
form,  including  the  form  of  its  pedestal,  must  not  be  too  rigid  and 
architectural ;  indeed  as  in  the  statues  of  Daudet  and  Thomas  in  the 
Pare  Monceau,  the  pedestal  may  be  an  irregular  mass  of  rock,  perhaps 
covered  or  garlanded  with  vines  and  closely  wrought  into  the  surround- 
ing ground  and  planting.  Then,  as  the  contrasts  of  color  in  the  natural 
landscape  are  likely  to  be  less  violent  than  they  are  in  man's  landscape 
designs,  the  marble  statue  which  might  be  none  too  distinctive  a  note 
on  a  formal  parterre  would  be  too  staring  white  in  a  park.  A  statue 
of  bronze,  of  lead,  of  gray  or  weathered  stone,  would  probably  be  more 
harmonious  in  the  naturalistic  surroundings. 

Some  statues  are  sufficiently  beautiful  in  all  aspects  to  stand  free 
and  be  looked  at  from  all  sides.  Where  such  a  statue  is  seen  relieved 
against  the  sky,  its  relative  size  and  bulk  in  the  composition  must  be 
looked  to,  that  it  may  not  appear  attenuated  and  insignificant.  Many 
statues,  however,  are  frankly  designed  to  face  one  way  only,  and  should 
therefore  be  provided  with  proper  enframement  and  proper  background. 
A  niche  in  a  trimmed  hedge,  a  retaining  wall  and  two  sentinel  cedars, 
and  many  other  formal  arrangements  may  serve  for  the  statue  closely 
*  See  the  illustrated  article  by  H.  A.  Caparn,  Statuary  in  Informal  Settings,  in 
Landscape  Architecture,  Oct.  1910.     (See  References.) 


STRUCTURES    IN    LANDSCAPE 2^3 

inclosed  in  a  formal  design.  In  a  naturalistic  design  this  enframement 
may  be  provided  by  an  informal  planting,  or  it  may  be  better  that  the 
statue  stand  free,  relieved  against  a  more  distant  background,  but  that 
the  spectator  be  unable  to  view  it  except  in  its  favorable  aspect. 

In  all  the  landscape  architect's  regulated  and  formalized  designs,  Architectural 
there    is    one   element  —  water  —  over  which   he   has    no    permanent  ^     ,^^' 
control.     He  can  determine  the  amount  of  its  flow,  he  can  determine  Features 
the  shape  of  its  mirror  in  his  formal  basins,  but  in  its  curve  of  fall  from 
one  basin  to  another,  in  its  noise  of  trickling  and  splashing,  in  its  re- 
flections and  the  sudden  flurry  of  wind  on  its  surface,  it  is  as  free  in 
the  formal  garden  as  it  is  in  the  mountain  brook.     Under  the  sun  of 
Italy  or  Spain  or  Persia  or  California,  water  and  shade  are  the  two 
precious  things  in  a  garden  ;  and  anywhere  in  the  United  States  in 
summer,  the  cooling  sight  and  sound  of  water,  if  it  had  no  further  quali- 
fication, would  fit  it  for  a  most  important  place  in  the  design.* 

According  to  the  amount  of  its  flow,  falling  water  varies  in  its  effect 
from  a  little  contented  chattering  trickle  to  a  noble  rush  of  water  like 
that  of  the  larger  fall  at  the  Villa  d'  Este.  Where  the  situation  allows 
it,  an  ample  flow  of  water  coming  forth  first  at  the  upper  portion  of 
the  scheme  and  then  appearing  in  fountain  and  fall  and  cascade  and 
pool  in  its  progress  throughout  the  design,  is  an  ideal  to  be  sought ; 
but  usually  the  supply  of  water  is  limited  or  the  natural  gradient  is 
slight,  and  we  must  content  ourselves  with  a  small  display  of  flowing 
water  and  use  our  ingenuity  to  make  this  as  effective  as  possible. 

Water  may  appear  first  in  a  scheme,  with  a  certain  suggestion  of  Grottoes  and 
being  a  natural  supply,  if  it  comes  out  in  a  niche  or  perhaps  in  a  grotto  ff^ oil  Fountains 
in  a  retaining  wall.  In  the  case  of  the  grotto,  the  dominating  idea 
would  probably  be  that  of  coolness.  A  grotto  is  in  any  case  expensive, 
however,  and  it  is  difficult  to  make  such  a  construction  containing  a 
flow  of  water  which  shall  not  be  dank  and  unpleasant  rather  than  re- 
freshingly cool.  More  readily,  somewhat  the  same  effect  at  a  smaller 
scale  might  be  obtained  by  having  the  water  appear  in  a  deep  over- 
shadowed niche,  perhaps  planted  with  ferns  and  other  vegetation  thriv- 
ing in  damp  and  shade.     In  some  of  the  Italian  examples  where  the 

*  For  the  use  of  water  in  its  natural  forms  in  landscape  design,  see  Chapter  VIII, 
p.  136. 


214 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Cascades 


Water-ramps 


water  so  appears  in  a  niche,  it  fails  from  above  upon  a  pile  of  rockwork 
intended  to  be  disposed  in  a  naturalistic  way.  If  the  rockwork  is  prac- 
tically hidden  by  the  splashing  water,  so  that  the  effect  is  that  of  an 
architectural  niche  filled  by  a  gleaming  cascade,  the  result  may  well 
be  good ;  if,  however,  the  rockwork  appears  to  any  extent,  the  result 
is  likely  to  be  ugly,  for  the  rockwork  with  only  some  trickling  water  is 
not  a  sufficiently  definite  object  to  be  worthy  of  its  enframement.  It 
is  usually  better  to  have  water  issue  from  some  definite  and  decorative 
object,  from  the  mouth  of  a  grotesque  mask  or  from  a  dolphin,  for 
instance.  Of  more  elaborate  wall  fountains  with  architectural  and 
sculptural  adjuncts  there  is  no  end.  In  any  thoroughly  satisfactory 
arrangement  of  this  kind,  however,  the  splashing  and  sparkling  of 
water  is  the  center  of  interest,  and  the  water  itself  is  sufficient  in  volume 
to  be  adequate  to  its  position.  There  are  many  elaborate  and  preten- 
tious fountains  which  for  lack  of  a  sufficient  water-supply  are  merely 
dampened  in  places  by  a  trickling  and  slimy  stream,  sufficient  to  spoil 
the  effect  of  the  structure,  but  not  sufficient  to  give  any  of  the  beauty 
of  running  water.  A  small  supply  of  water,  however,  properly  managed 
may  give  a  very  considerable  effect.  It  can  be  arranged  to  fall  from  one 
basin  into  another  in  a  clean  but  thin  sheet  without  wasting  any  of 
its  volume  by  running  down  over  the  surface  of  the  stone,  if  the  lip  of 
the  basin  be  properly  undercut.*  Similarly  if  the  water  flows  in  a 
cascade,  or  over  sculptured  irregularities  in  the  course  of  a  water-chute, 
the  channel  may  be  so  designed  as  to  throw  the  water  into  the  air  in 
a  series  of  sharp  leaps  rather  than  to  allow  it  to  trickle  around  the 
obstructions  with  no  spattering  of  drops  to  catch  the  sun. 

The  water-ramp  gives  a  noticeable  effect  from  a  moderate  water- 
supply,  where  the  stream  flows  in  a  channel  hollowed  out  in  the  ramp 
beside  a  flight  of  steps.  There  may  be  a  series  of  carved  shells  or 
other  sculptural  modelings  of  the  channel  throwing  the  water  back 
and  forth  and  making  the  most  of  its  appearance  and  its  sound.  And 
each  pier  of  the  ramp  may  be  crowned  with  a  little  basin  and  graced 
with  a  delicate  toppling  spurt  of  water,  perhaps  fed  from  the  channel 
in  the  ramp,  but  more  probably  from  a  separate  source  which  gives 
somewhat  more  pressure.     Such  ramps  may  be  found  at  the  Villa  d'  Este 

*  Cf.  Chapter  VIII,  p.  142. 


STRUCTURES    IN    LANDSCAPE 2£5 

at  Tivoli,  at  the  Villa  Farnese,  at  Caprarola,  and  at  the  Villa  Lante, 
and  in  many  other  places,  especially  in  Italy. 

The  free-standing  fountain  of  superposed  basins,  often  decorated  Free-standing 
with  a  statue,  with  the  water  proceeding  from  a  central  jet,  or  perhaps  fountains 
from  a  series  of  jets  arranged  about  the  lower  basin,  is  the  most  or- 
dinary fountain  with  which  we  are  familiar.  Its  form  is  dominantly 
architectural  or  sculptural,  and  the  water  plays  a  subordinate  part. 
If  it  is  to  be  a  fountain  at  all,  however,  it  should  be  sufficiently  supplied 
with  water  so  that  the  rising  and  converging  misty  jets  or  the  clean 
curving,  falling  film  should  bear  a  designated  part  in  the  designed  form 
of  the  whole  feature.  There  is  no  limit  to  the  form  of  free-standing 
fountains  except  the  limit  to  man's  ingenuity.  Turtles,  dolphins,  sea- 
horses, Tritons,  Nereids,  any  of  the  race  of  water-dwelling  creatures, 
natural  and  mythological,  may  decorate  a  fountain  basin  or  spout 
water  across  it.  In  the  great  basin  at  Wilhelmshohe,  there  is  a  single 
magnificent  shaft  of  water  which  rises  some  two  hundred  feet  above 
the  surface  of  the  basin.  A  fountain  in  the  Fountain  Court  at  Hampton 
Court  consists  of  a  series  of  interwoven  jets  making  a  basket  of  crystal. 
A  small  fountain  in  a  sequestered  place  might  consist  of  a  simple  cir- 
cular pool  in  the  midst  of  which,  on  a  block  of  stone,  was  set  a  great 
graceful  blown-glass  vase,  like  an  Italian  fiasco,  constantly  brimming 
with  clear  water  and  overflowing  in  a  thin  film  clothing  the  outside  of 
the  glass  and  dripping  into  the  pool ;  or  in  a  similar  situation,  there 
might  be,  supported  on  a  slender  shaft  eighteen  inches  or  so  above  the 
surface  of  a  little  pool,  a  bronze  water-lily  on  a  leaf  from  under  the  edge 
of  which,  through  an  annular  opening,  a  thin  unbroken  sheet  of  water 
would  fall  like  a  quivering  hemispherical  bubble  into  the  pool  below. 

Besides  using  in  design  the  life  and  dash  and  sparkle  of  running  Pools  and 
water,  the  landscape  architect  may  also  turn  to  his  purposes  the  calm  Basins 
of  the  standing  pool,  with  its  interwoven  reflections.  A  pool  may  be 
designed  like  a  low  flower  bed  or  a  grass  panel,  as  a  portion  of  the  sur- 
face-treatment of  a  parterre  or  garden.  Usually  such  a  pool  will  be  made 
a  part  of  the  foreground  of  some  important  object  so  that  its  power  of 
reflection  may  be  made  the  most  of  in  duplicating  and  enhancing  some- 
thing of  particular  beauty.  When  a  pool  is  so  used,  it  should  usually 
be  designed  to  be  brimming  full  of  water,  and  generally  its  long  di- 


2i6 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

mension  should  run  with  the  direction  of  the  view  towards  the  object 
which  it  reflects,  so  as  to  provide  as  large  a  mirror  surface  as  possible. 
Pools  may  be  surrounded  by  balustrades  or  decorative  planting,  or 
their  surface  may  be  diversified  with  floating  lilies,  but  the  designer 
who  attempts  such  arrangements  should  first  be  sure  that  he  is  not  for 
the  sake  of  a  minor  decoration  spoiling  the  main  purpose  of  the  pool. 

A  pool  may  often  have  a  fountain  as  a  dominant  feature,  or  it  may 
be  surrounded  or  diversified  with  a  number  of  jets.  While  these  foun- 
tains are  playing,  the  perfect  reflecting  surface  of  the  pool  is  destroyed. 
Often  such  fountains  play  only  at  times,  merely  delivering  water  enough 
to  keep  the  pool  at  its  proper  level.  This  is  usually  for  economy  of 
water,  but  it  may  be  also  for  the  intentional  alternation  of  the  effect 
of  moving  and  of  quiet  water.  In  any  case  when  a  fountain  does  not 
play  all  the  time,  the  source  of  the  water  should  be  either  some  feature 
which  is  sufficient  in  the  design  without  the  running  water,  as  in  the 
Hercules  fountain  at  Castello,  or  something  which  does  not  interrupt 
the  pool  when  the  water  is  not  playing,  as  at  the  gardens  of  the  Gen- 
eraliffe  at  Granada,  or  those  of  the  Taj  Mahal. 

A  pool  may  form  the  central  feature  of  a  shady  bosquet,  where  the 
visitor  looks  down  more  directly  on  the  surface  of  the  water  and  sees 
the  reflection  of  the  sky  through  the  interlaced  branches  of  the  trees,  — 
an  area  of  brilliant  light  and  color  brought  down  into  the  darkness  of 
the  grove.  Such  a  pool  may  perhaps  lie  deeper  within  its  curb,  and  its 
beauty  may  consist  largely  in  the  color  of  the  water  itself.  If  the  pool  can 
be  very  deep,  a  clean  white  marble  basin  may  show  the  water  sapphire 
blue.  If  this  depth  is  not  possible,  a  basin  of  colored  tiles  may  produce 
somewhat  the  same  or  many  other  interesting  effects.  If  it  be  possible 
that  some  time  during  the  day  a  beam  of  sunshine  should  fall  into  the 
pool  leaving  the  rest  in  shadow,  this  should  by  all  means  be  arranged. 
Bridges  ^  bridge  is  primarily  a  structure  built  for  use.     Though  the  land- 

scape designer  may  seize  upon  it  as  giving  him  a  chance  of  erecting  an 
interesting  object  where  he  wishes  it  in  his  esthetic  design,  still  it  must 
be  fitted  to  carry  traffic  and  it  should  look  as  if  it  were  so  fitted.  A 
bridge,  therefore,  should  be  in  scale  both  with  the  road  or  path  which 
it  carries  and  with  the  water,  or  possibly  a  ravine  or  another  road,  which 
it  crosses,  when  this  second  feature  is  of  any  importance  in  the  com- 


STRUCTURES     IN    LANDSCAPE ar/ 

position.  A  very  elaborate  triumphal  bridge  carrying  an  unimportant 
footpath  is  likely  to  appear  as  absurd  as  a  great  stone  arch  carrying  a 
highway  over  an  insignificant  rivulet.  Unlike  various  structures  which 
we  have  before  discussed,  a  bridge  is  not  seen  to  best  advantage  from 
the  road  or  path  which  approaches  it.  If  it  be  a  covered  bridge,  or  if 
there  be  some  kind  of  pylon  on  each  side  of  the  way  at  the  end  of  the 
bridge,  there  will  be  from  the  road  a  certain  sense  of  an  enframed  en- 
trance, to  any  one  crossing  the  bridge,  and  the  view  up  and  down  the 
water  from  the  bridge  may  also  in  some  cases  be  similarly  enframed, 
particularly  if  the  bridge  is  covered.  It  is  in  the  views  towards  it  across 
water  that  the  bridge  assumes  its  real  value  as  an  esthetic  unit  in  land- 
scape composition.  (See  Plates  28  and  32.)  Almost  inevitably  it  is  the 
dominant  object  of  an  enframed  composition  with  many  lines  converging 
upon  it.  Frequently  tall  planting  *  on  the  shores  from  which  the 
bridge  springs  will  pleasantly  increase  this  enframement  and  give  an 
additional  solidity  to  the  abutment.  It  is  never  without  its  reflection 
in  the  water,  clear  or  blurred  as  the  water  surface  may  make  it,  and 
the  designer  should  remember  that  he  is  creating  not  the  span  of  the 
bridge  alone,  but  also  Its  inverted  counterpart  in  the  surface  below. 

The  shape  of  the  bridge  may  be  an  arch  or  a  series  of  arches,  with  Forms  and 
any  degree  of  proportion  of  rise  and  span,  or  it  may  be  abutment  and  ^^'J^^f^  °^ 
pier  and  gently  cambered  line  of  traffic-way  over  all,  or  exceptionally 
it  may  be  a  spider-web  construction  of  steel  cables  and  suspended  road- 
way between  two  towers.  All  these  shapes  may  be  very  beautiful. 
Modern  knowledge  of  the  use  of  structural  steel  has  produced  many 
other  economically  efficient  forms  as  well.  Many  of  them  are  in- 
herently ugly;  others  we  may  learn  to  like,  when  our  present  knowl- 
edge of  the  possibilities  of  steel  has  passed  into  a  feeling  for  proportion 
of  parts  as  it  has,  long  since,  in  the  case  of  stone. 

The  form  as  well  as  the  material  will  probably  be  forced  upon  the 
designer  by  considerations  of  cost,  traffic,  and  local  conditions.  This 
form,  however,  should  not  only  be  actually  sufficient  for  structural 
stability,  but  should  appear  to  be  so.f     A  bridge  can  be  consistently 

*  Cf.  Planting  in  relation  to  bridges,  Chapter  IX,  p.  187. 

t  For  illustrations  of  various  bridge  forms  see  H.  G.  Tyrrell's  Artistic  Bridge 
Design.     (See  References.) 


2i8 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

light  or  heavy,  according  as  it  may  be  a  suspension  bridge,  a  reenforced 
concrete  bridge,  or  a  stone  bridge ;  but  in  each  case  a  proportion  should 
be  preserved  between  the  apparent  strength  of  the  parts  and  the  work 
which  they  are  doing,  even  though  it  might  be  structurally  possible  to 
save  material  at  the  expense  of  apparently  functional  form.  If  the 
designer  has  a  free  hand,  he  may  choose  to  construct  a  low  horizontal 
bridge  in  a  flat  marsh  country ;  a  high  sharp-pointed  arch  between  two 
rocky  cliffs.  If  the  bridge  is  to  be  considered  as  an  architectural 
structure,  perfect  as  far  as  may  be  in  itself,  it  is  certainly  the  fact  that 
no  bridge  can  be  more  unified  than  one  of  a  single,  well-proportioned 
arch,  or  perhaps  of  a  series  of  arches  justly  related  to  the  effect  of  the 
whole  span. 

Usually,  even  the  smaller  footbridges  are  structures  for  an  obvious 
purpose,  and  they  should  be  so  designed.  (See  Plates  3  and  4.) 
In  a  rugged  natural  landscape,  a  bridge  may  well  be  built,  for  instance, 
of  large  rough  blocks  of  unhewn  stone,  but  these  blocks  should  be  laid 
to  make  a  proper  and  reasonable  bridge,  and  not  in  unequal  and  irregu- 
lar arches,  which  do  not  make  the  bridge  less  a  man-made  structure, 
but  succeed  only  in  making  it  a  bad  structure.  If  it  is  important  that 
the  hand  of  man  be  not  visible  in  a  particular  view,  and  if  a  way  for 
traffic  across  a  stream  may  be  managed  by  means  of  rock  masses  which 
are  apparently  natural,  this  indeed  may  be  legitimately  done,  and  such 
an  arrangement  may  form  a  very  desirable  feature,  usually  at  a  small 
scale,  in  naturalistic  rock  gardens  or  similar  designs. 

Except  for  the  occasional  use  of  a  fallen  log  across  a  stream,  it  is 
practically  impossible  to  make  anything  which  could  be  called  a  natu- 
ralistic wooden  bridge.  It  is  nevertheless  possible  and  often  very 
effective  to  construct  a  small  bridge  of  logs  and  poles,  perhaps  with  their 
bark  still  on,  which  shall,  by  their  surface  and  to  some  extent  by  their 
form,  be  congruous  and  not  unduly  conspicuous  in  a  natural  scene.  (See 
Plate  12.)  Usually,  however,  the  quaint  conceits  of  rustic  work  in 
gnarled  branches  and  contorted  roots  are  to  be  avoided,  except  as  an 
occasional  amusing  eccentricity.  Their  forms  are  usually  ugly,  and 
they  look,  if  anything,  more  like  the  work  of  man  and  less  like  natural 

Roads  and  objects  than  do  straightforward  bridges  of  similar  material. 

Paths  Roads  and  paths,  like  all  the  other  elements  of  landscape  composi- 


STRUCTURES    IN    LANDSCAPE 219 

tion  which  we  have  been  discussing  in  this  chapter,  are  differently 
handled  by  the  designer  according  as  they  form  a  part  of  a  humanized 
or  of  a  naturalistic  composition.*  With  roads  and  paths,  this  differ- 
ence is  greater  than  with  most  of  the  other  objects,  because  in  formal 
and  some  man-made  informal  landscape  design,  the  roads  and  paths 
are  made  to  be  seen  and  to  take  their  part  as  important  elements  in 
the  composition,  whereas  in  a  natural  or  naturalistic  landscape,  they 
are  usually  a  necessity  to  be  tolerated,  not  a  beauty  to  be  displayed. 

In  a  naturalistic  landscape,  as  far  as  it  is  possible,  the  road  should  Roads  in 
seem  to  lie  upon  the  surface  of  the  ground  without  interruption  of  the  r^l^JJt^i^g'^ 
natural  modeling.  The  surface  of  necessary  cuts  and  fills  should 
simulate  the  natural  surface  where  possible ;  where  this  is  impossible 
their  modeling  should  still  be  as  sequential  and  unbroken  a  continua- 
tion of  the  natural  surface  as  the  designer  can  arrange.  Usually,  if 
the  road  lies  somewhat  below  the  adjoining  surface,  it  will  be  less  con- 
spicuous. Where  a  road  must  cross  a  view  over  an  open  area,  in  a 
naturalistic  scheme,  it  may  be  impossible  to  conceal  the  road  by  plant- 
ing without  thereby  interrupting  the  view.  It  may  be  still  possible 
to  lead  the  road  across  the  open  space  in  a  depression,  deep  enough  at 
any  rate  to  conceal  the  road  surface,  perhaps  deep  enough  to  conceal 
the  traffic  as  well,  and  in  any  case  so  arranged  that  the  line  of  sight 
passes  from  a  surface  on  the  nearer  side,  related  to  the  whole  open 
area,  to  a  surface  on  the  farther  side,  apparently  continuous  with  it, 
and  the  mind  is  thus  led  to  suppose  that  the  intervening  surface,  not 
seen,  is  of  the  same  character. 

Where  a  road  is  to  be  inconspicuous,  its  surface  should  be  as  little 
noticeable  in  color  as  possible  and  its  edges  should  not  present  a  clean, 
hard,  and  definite  line.  These  considerations  make  the  use  of  a  road 
material  like  gravel  or  broken  stone  esthetically  preferable  to  that  of 
brick  or  cement.  Asphalt-bound  roads,  as  we  have  seen,  may  be  con- 
structed with  a  surface  not  much  different  from  macadam,  and  with 
sufficient  care  the  sharpness  of  their  edges  need  not  be  too  conspicuous. 
Such  a  surface  may  be  modeled  into  gutters  on  the  sides,  but  macadam 
and  gravel  surfaces  are  too  soft  to  serve  as  gutters  on  any  considerable 

*  For  some  discussion  of  roads  and  paths  in  the  design  of  the  estate,  the  park,  or  • 

land  subdivision,  see  Chapter  XI. 


220 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

slope.  A  gutter  of  cobble-stones  or  kidney-stones  may  be  constructed 
which  will  make  a  sufficiently  irregular  line  along  the  edge  of  the  road. 
In  many  cases,  however,  the  better  arrangement  is  to  throw  the  water 
off  the  surface  of  the  road  on  to  the  adjoining  grass  surface,  carrying 
the  water  away  from  the  road,  where  this  is  possible,  and  elsewhere 
constructing  a  broad,  shallow  turf  gutter,  its  outer  side  joining  the 
natural  ground  surface  by  insensible  and  varied  modulations,  its  inner 
side  joining  smoothly  to  the  curve  of  the  crown  of  the  road. 
Form  of  The  maximum  gradient  of  the  road  will  be  determined  by  the  char- 

■^<"*'^^  acter  of  the  traffic  and  the  character  of  the  road  surface.*     Its  location 

upon  the  topography  will  be  determined  as  a  matter  of  economics  by 
the  directness  and  cheapness  with  which  the  road  can  be  run  to  the 
point  it  seeks  without  exceeding  the  maximum  gradient  and  without 
turns  too  sharp  to  be  readily  followed  by  the  traffic.  As  a  matter  of 
esthetics,  however,  the  road  should,  as  we  have  said,  seem  to  fit  the 
topography  with  the  least  possible  disturbance  and  should  seem  to  go 
as  directly  as  may  be  from  one  point  of  interest  to  another.  If  it  vary 
from  directness,  it  should  be  only  for  a  sufficient  obstacle,  hill  or  valley, 
or  outcropping  ledge  or  foliage  mass.  (See  Plate  15.)  If  the  road 
be  unimportant  in  character  like  a  country  lane,  continuity  or  clean- 
ness of  curvature  in  its  line  is  not  essential,  and  indeed,  often  not  de- 
sirable. If  the  road  is  important  enough  to  be,  whether  the  designer 
desires  it  or  not,  a  considerable  feature  in  the  landscape,  at  least  when 
seen  by  the  traveler  upon  it,  then  the  unity  of  its  curvature  must  be 
considered.  (See  Plate  31.)  Too  great  an  insistence  on  this  unity, 
particularly  through  considerable  portions  of  the  length  of  the  road, 
may  very  unhappily  increase  the  relative  importance  of  a  road  which 
should  be  subordinate  in  a  design ;  but  sequence  of  curve,  smoothness 
of  flow  of  one  curve  into  another,  is  certainly  desirable,  if  for  no  other 
reason  than  its  obvious  adaptation  to  the  passage  of  traffic.     When  a 

*  There  is  not  space  here  for  a  discussion,  at  a  scale  to  be  useful,  of  the  inter- 
acting economic  considerations  of  road-gradient,  cross-section,  and  surface  in  relation 
to  the  various  traffic  requirements,  flow  of  surface  water,  sub-surface  utilities,  and 
cost  of  construction  and  maintenance.  For  discussion  of  these  topics,  particularly 
in  relation  to  larger  public  roads,  see  such  books  as  Blanchard  and  Drowne's  High- 
way Construction  or  Frost's  Art  of  Road  Making. 


STRUCTURES    IN    LANDSCAPE 


221 


road  turns  about  an  obstacle,  it  should  not  of  course  turn  so  sharply  as 
to  discommode  the  traffic ;  on  the  other  hand,  having  turned  as  sharply 
as  it  conveniently  can,  it  should  set  off  directly  for  its  next  necessary 
point  of  turning  and  should  not  lie  upon  the  landscape  in  a  series  of 
broad  and  unnecessary  loops.  It  should  be  remembered  in  designing 
a  road  on  plan  that  it  is  seen  in  reality  in  sharp  perspective,  and  that  a 
slight  curve,  so  long  as  it  is  virile  and  definite,  is  likely  to  be  of  sufficient 
effect. 

Where  a  road  comes  into  or  intersects  another,  the  first  considera-  Road  Inter- 
tion  is  the  smooth  flow  of  traffic  in  plan  and  in  profile  from  each  road  ^^^^^°^^ 
into  the  other.     The  practical  considerations,  then,  of  gradient,  pos- 


4 


'^^ 


-   UAJITY  BY 


Virw  DOWM  51t'E-R0AI> 
BLOCKED  Br  lil^ND 


QEonrrRic  unity 


TYPICAL  PLANS 
OF  CURVING  ROADS 


at'BOKWNATION  OrSIKV/CtRQAD 

BY  SHARPER  CURVATUR.e 

ASP  ^nMXZiL  sizs 


DRAWING  XXVIII 


sible  radius  of  turning  of  an  automobile,  and  view  from  one  road  to 
another  to  prevent  accidents,  must  come  first.  If  the  curved  con- 
tinuation of  the  side-line  of  one  road  into  that  of  another  undesirably 
increases  the  road  surface  at  the  junction,  then  it  may  perhaps  be  well 
to  lead  the  roads  into  each  other  by  still  more  gentle  curves  and  so  to 
produce  islands  between  the  branches  of  the  roads,  which  may  be 
covered  with  low  planting  to  conceal  any  undue  amount  of  road  sur- 
face.    (See  Drawing  XXVIII,  above.) 


222 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

Where  two  roads  bearing  very  different  kinds  of  traffic  must  cross  each 
other,  —  as  for  instance  where,  exceptionally,  a  service  road  crosses  an 
approach  road  on  a  private  estate,  or  where  a  cross  line  of  commercial 
traffic  must  intersect  a  park  road,  —  one  road  may  be  bridged  over 
the  other.  Usually  the  less  important  road  will  go  beneath,  although 
the  topography  may  determine  without  appeal  which  shall  be  the 
higher  road.  If  the  service  road  passes  over  the  pleasure  road,  it 
should  usually  do  so  on  a  well-designed  bridge.  If  the  pleasure  road 
passes  above,  perhaps  a  wider  bridge  may  be  used,  with  planting  on 
its  sides,  or  the  service  road  may  even  go  through  a  short  tunnel, 
giving  space  for  planting  enough  to  make  it  quite  invisible  from  the 
pleasure  road. 
Fiews  of  and  A  road  serves  Other  purposes  in  landscape  design  than  mere  provision 

from  Roads  f^j.  g^gg  q{  traffic.  It  is  taken  by  the  traveler  as  a  guide :  he  assumes 
that  a  road  will  lead  him  to  the  places  to  which  he  is  supposed  to  go. 
Roads  can  thus  be  used  to  display  to  those  using  them  certain  beauties 
of  a  park  or  of  a  private  estate.  If  this  enjoyment  of  views  from  the 
road  is  a  matter  of  considerable  importance  in  the  whole  design,  pains 
should  be  taken  that  the  spectators  come  to  the  various  outlooks  and 
objects  of  interest  without  retracing  their  course,*  in  pleasant  sequence, 
and  prepared  by  each  one  for  the  next  to  come,  as  where,  after  passing 
through  a  shady  wood,  a  road  comes  to  an  outlook  over  a  sunny  land- 
scape. Views  taken  up  and  down  the  road  must  be  considered  :  they 
are  inevitably  seen  by  every  one  who  travels  upon  it.  Where  a  road 
changes  direction,  a  view  out  at  the  point  of  change,  continuing  the 
line  of  the  road  which  approaches  it  and  centering  on  an  interesting 
distant  object  suitably  enframed  by  che  planting  about  the  road  itself, 
is  a  desirable  possibility  which  the  designer  should  have  in  mind. 
(See  Drawing  XV,  opp.  p.  122.)  Views  to  be  enjoyed  from  a  road,  where 
the  spectator  looks  sharply  to  the  right  or  left,  should  of  course  be  en- 
framed by  the  planting  along  the  road  itself,  but  they  should  not  be 
enframed  with  so  small  an  opening  that  the  traveler  has  been  carried 
by  before  he  has  had  time  to  enjoy  the  view.  It  is  usually  desirable 
also  that  interesting  views  should  not  be  seen  to  right  and  left  of  the 
road  at  the  same  time,  if  it  can  be  arranged  that  they  be  seen  alternately. 

*  Cf.  Chapter  XI,  p.  309. 


STRUCTURES   IN  LANDSCAPE 223 

These  last  two  considerations  apply  especially  to  roads  designed  for 
fast  pleasure  traffic. 

The  planting  along  the  roadside  can  be  made  a  considerable  factor  Planting  and 
in  its  beauty,  —  indeed,  where  there  are  no  particular  distant  views,  ^^""^^ 
perhaps  the  greatest  factor.  The  character  of  the  planting  will  vary 
with  the  surroundings,  from  the  succession  of  private  properties  of  the 
suburbs  and  the  trees  and  shrubs  of  the  planting  strip  of  a  parkway 
to  the  hedgerows  and  flowers  and  shrub-grown  walls  of  the  country- 
side and  the  natural  trees  and  undergrowth  of  the  woods.  In  any  case 
the  best  design  will  probably  be  to  seize  upon  the  particular  character 
of  each  landscape  unit  through  which  the  road  passes,  and  develop 
it  to  its  best  expression,  as  far  as  this  is  possible  in  a  narrow  strip  along 
the  road,  for  itself  alone  or  as  a  foreground  to  a  more  distant  view. 
Thus  a  sequence  of  different  effects  will  be  presented  to  any  one  passing 
along  the  road.  It  should  be  remembered  that  the  scenes  presented 
should  be  such  that  they  may  be  grasped  and  enjoyed  by  a  spectator 
moving  at  some  speed. 

Roads,  if  they  are  to  be  comfortable  and  pleasant  to  those  who 
travel  upon  them,  must  be  shaded.  In  formal  designs  and  on  our  streets 
and  ordinary  country  roads,  a  more  or  less  consistent  and  equally- 
spaced  line  of  trees  serves  this  purpose  best.  In  a  naturalistic  design, 
however,  such  a  line  of  trees  might  well  be  an  incongruous  element  in 
the  landscape,  and  plainly  betray  the  road  which  it  was  planted  to 
conceal.  In  such  cases,  informal  plantations  of  trees  and  shrubs  may 
be  used,  and  the  whole  so  designed  that  the  road  shall  seem  to  have 
been  run  through  a  fortunately  preexisting  series  of  groups  of  foliage, 
rather  than  that  the  location  of  the  foliage  masses  should  seem  to  be 
dependent  on  the  road.  The  side  of  the  planting  next  the  road  must 
inevitably  to  some  extent  be  parallel  to  the  line  of  the  road  ;  but  the 
sides  of  the  planting  masses  away  from  the  road  should  be  related  not 
to  the  road,  but  to  whatever  open  area  may  lie  beyond  and  be  bounded 
by  them. 

This  necessary  placing  of  planting  near  the  road  makes  the  road 
all  the  more  a  line  of  demarcation  between  area  and  area,  between 
design  unit  and  design  unit  in  the  composition.  The  location  of  the 
road  must  be  studied  from  this  point  of  view  also,  then,  for  on  its  posi- 


224 


LANDSCAPE     DESIGN 


Paths  in 

Naturalistic 

Design 


Form  of  Paths 


tion  may  well  depend  the  main  organization  of  the  whole  design.      (See 
Drawing  XXXV,  opp.  p.  298.) 

Footpaths  in  naturalistic  landscape  are  subject  to  most  of  the 
considerations  which  we  have  discussed  in  regard  to  roads,  but  being 
smaller,  less  important,  and  able  to  turn  sharper  angles  and  surmount 
steeper  gradients,  they  may  be  and  should  be  fitted  more  closely  to 
the  topography  than  are  roads.  Where  they  are  used  in  conjunction 
with  roads,  as  in  park  design,  and  even  sometimes  in  land  subdivision 
schemes  of  large  lots  in  a  varied  landscape,  the  paths  need  not  slavishly 
follow  the  road,  but  may  depart  from  it  to  surmount  a  steep  gradient 
in  an  easier  way,  to  go  around  a  ledge  or  a  tree,  even  to  seek  some  point 
from  which  a  view  may  be  obtained.  In  some  designs,  indeed,  it  Is 
not  desirable  to  parallel  the  road  with  the  path,  if  the  foot  traffic  may 
be  carried  to  its  destination  in  some  other  way  as  well,  since  the  wheel 
traffic  and  its  attendant  noise  and  perhaps  dust  is  not  the  most  desirable 
adjunct  to  a  pleasure  path. 

As  a  general  principle,  a  path,  like  a  road,  should  go  from  one  point 
of  interest  to  another  as  directly  as  is  reasonable  under  the  circum- 
stances. Even  in  a  fairly  open  country,  it  is  usually  possible,  by 
judicious  disposition  of  trees  and  shrub  masses  and  minor  accidents  of 
ground,  to  make  the  separate  open  stretches  of  path  from  curve  to 
curve  short  enough  to  be  fairly  direct  and  still  not  uninteresting. 
Where  a  path  continues,  however,  for  a  considerable  distance  over  an 
undulating  open  country,  something  more  is  likely  to  be  necessary  for 
its  pleasant  appearance  than  merely  a  succession  of  these  minor  unified 
stretches  from  interest  to  interest.  In  places  at  least,  it  may  be  well 
to  have  a  certain  correspondence  of  the  curving  of  the  path  to  the  un- 
dulation of  the  ground,  —  not  running  in  the  straightest  way  over  the 
knolls,  not  running  on  a  level  line  around  them,  but  making  a  sort  of 
compromise  between  the  directness  of  the  path  and  the  suggested  more 
than  real  difficulties  of  the  topography,  —  which  taken  as  a  whole  will 
make  the  path  more  a  part  of  the  landscape.  This  subtle  play  of  curve 
of  surface  on  plan  and  profile  is  an  extremely  difficult  thing  to  study, 
except  in  its  larger  aspects,  on  the  drafting-board  in  the  office.  It 
must  be  staked  out  upon  the  ground,  studied,  re-staked,  changed  in 
plan  and  profile  perhaps  only  by  inches,  but  in  this  way  delicately 


STRUCTURES    IN    LANDSCAPE 225 

fitted  to  its  particular  situation  before  the  designer  can  properly  feel 
that  he  has  done  his  best.* 

In  designs  of  a  generally  loose  texture,  where  beauty  of  definiteness 
of  form  is  not  insisted  on,  and  especially  in  rough  and  broken  country, 
and  in  wooded  country  where  only  a  small  portion  of  the  path  may  be 
seen  at  any  one  time,  continuity  of  curve  in  a  path  usually  becomes 
of  no  value  whatever  (see'  Drawing  II,  opp.  p.  30),  and  adaptation 
to  the  topography  and  direction  towards  points  of  larger  view  and  to 
little  minor  interests  of  fallen  log  and  outcropping  rock  are  the  results 
to  be  sought.  Such  paths,  if  there  is  any  considerable  traffic,  particu- 
larly in  places  open  to  the  public  where  the  danger  of  destruction  is 
greater,  should  be  definite  enough  and  convenient  enough  to  lead  the 
traffic  along  them  and  not  to  tempt  people  to  short  cuts  and  wanderings 
destructive  of  the  scenery.  The  path  surface,  too,  should  offer  reason- 
ably good  footing,  but  beyond  this  point  the  less  definite,  the  less  con- 
spicuous, the  less  exactly  parallel-sided  the  paths  are,  the  better. 

Where  a  path  which  carries  but  little  traffic  must  cross  a  lawn  and 
cannot  on  account  of  the  scale  of  the  design  or  for  some  other  reason 
be  concealed  by  the  modeling  of  the  ground,  it  may  be  constructed 
of  stepping  stones  set  in  the  turf,  slightly  sunken  so  that  the  grass 
beside  and  between  the  stones  conceals  them  in  any  distant  view. 
Where  the  traffic  is  very  light  it  may  go  directly  over  the  turf,  and  if  it 
be  possible  by  the  erection  of  temporary  barriers  to  direct  the  traffic 
over  one  turf  area  while  another  is  recovering,  very  considerable  traffic 
may  be  handled  with  no  particular  detriment  to  the  landscape  appear- 
ance. 

In  formal  landscape  design,  the  roads  and  paths  take  their  share  Roads  in 
with  the  turf  areas,  the  parterres,  the  curbs,  the  low  shrub  masses,  and  ^°^^^ 
the  flower  beds,  as  parts  of  the  pattern  with  which  the  ground  is  dec- 
orated.!    The  roads  and  paths,  however,  can  never  escape  from  the 

*  Cf.  Piickler-Muskau's  account  of  his  care  in  staking  out  a  path  up  a  hill,  in 
his  Andeutungen  uher  Landschafts-gdrtnerei,  1834,  p.  114-116,  and  Atlas,  plate  V  e. 
Also  quoted  in  Parsons'  Art  of  Landscape  Architecture,  1915,  p.  134-135.  (See  Refer- 
ences.) 

t  See  also  the  French  so-called  informal  designs  as  illustrated,  for  instance,  in 
Andre's  UArt  des  Jardins,  1879,  p.  787. 
Q 


226 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Paths  in 

Formal 

Design 


fact  that  they  were  first  made  to  be  used.  They  must  be  and  appear 
to  be  suited  to  the  traffic  which  passes  over  them,  and  they  must  lead 
with  reasonable  directness  along  the  lines  over  which  this  traffic  might 
be  expected  to  pass.  In  a  "greeting"  in  a  park,  in  a  tree-colonnaded 
vista  of  broad  parkway,  in  a  straight  stretch  of  driveway  commanding 
a  view  from  a  river  bluff,  the  designer  may  express  the  uses  of  his  road 
in  an  effective  formal  composition.  Similarly,  a  drive  may  approach 
a  building  axially,  terminating  in  an  axial  circle  or  a  forecourt,  or  per- 
haps there  may  be  two  drives  defining  a  central  grass  panel,  or  a  semi- 
circular drive  swinging  in  from  the  street,  passing  the  door,  and  swinging 
out  again  on  the  same  curve.  In  any  of  these  cases  the  road  is  forming 
or  defining  a  definite  and  balanced  composition. 

In  the  larger  formal  schemes,  such  as  a  great  formal  park  like  the 
Mariannenpark  at  Leipzig,*  or  in  this  country  in  connection  with 
building  groups,  like  college  buildings,  the  roads  may  be  used  as  part 
of  the  formal  pattern  of  the  ground.  At  a  smaller  scale  this  is  difficult 
if  the  roads  are  to  remain  otherwise  useful,  since  the  necessary  width 
of  the  roads  and  the  necessary  radius  for  the  turning  of  vehicles  tend  to 
make  the  roads  out  of  scale  with  the  other  units  of  surface  decoration. 

Since  foot  traffic  can  turn  at  a  sharp  angle  and  can  occupy  more  or 
less  width  of  path  according  to  circumstances,  paths  are  much  more 
easily  handled  as  formal  ground-surface  decoration  than  roads  are. 
How  far  they  may  be  subjected  entirely  to  the  decorative  needs  of  the 
scheme  will  be  determined  largely  by  the  amount  and  kind  of  traffic 
which  they  are  to  bear.  In  the  Harvard  College  "Yard,"  for  instance, 
though  the  roads  bear  some  slight  formal  relation  to  the  buildings,  most 
of  the  paths  are  purely  utilitarian,  laid  out  where  the  traffic  tensions 
require  them,  and  made  inconspicuous  simply  by  being  no  wider  than 
necessary  to  accommodate  those  who  walk  upon  them.  This  is  an  ex- 
treme case,  of  course,  because  the  student  going  to  a  recitation  is 
probably  the  man  of  all  men  the  most  impatient  of  circuities.  In  a 
garden  f  on  the  other  hand,  which  is  or  ought  to  be  a  place  of  leisure, 

*  Illustrated  with  other  modern  German  parks  in  an  article  in  Gartenkunst,  June 
1914,  vol.  16,  p.  181-195. 

t  For  an  example  of  how  paths  may  be  used  as  surface  decoration  in  formal  design, 
see  discussion  under  the  Garden,  Chapter  XI,  p.  243. 


STRUCTURES    IN    LANDSCAPE 227 

indirectness  of  paths,  if  it  has  some  ostensible  reason,  is  not  of  serious 
moment.  Even  here  the  paths  should  seem  to  lead  somewhere,  almost 
never  making  a  dead  end,  or,  when  they  dos  terminating  at  some  im- 
portant object. 

A  path,  being  essentially  long  in  comparison  with  its  width,  serves 
rather  as  a  boundary  between  two  masses  than  as  a  mass  in  itself.  It 
is  rare,  therefore,  that  a  path,  unless  it  be  very  broad,  can  be  placed  on 
the  axis  of  an  open  design  :  its  effect  is  quite  likely  to  be  that  of  splitting 
the  design  into  two  parts.  Where  there  is  shrubbery  or  flower  planting 
of  some  height  on  the  sides  of  the  path,  however,  the  axis  of  the  view 
may  lie  on  the  path  if  it  be  properly  terminated  by  some  sufficient 
feature.  Where  a  path  outlines  a  grass  panel  or  forms  a  pattern  with 
a  number  of  flower  beds,  the  width  of  the  path  must  be  studied  in  its 
relation  to  the  whole  design,  so  that  there  may  be  no  ambiguity  as  to 
what  relation  was  intended ;  so  that,  for  instance,  the  scheme  shall 
appear  as  an  interesting  network  of  gravel  paths  running  through  an 
interesting  design  of  flower  beds,  rather  than  as  a  group  of  flower  beds 
set  down  in  an  expanse  of  gravel.  (For  examples  of  paths  in  formal 
design,  see  Plate  30,  Tailpiece  on  p.  23.  Drawing  X,  opp.  p.  80, 
Drawing  XI,  opp.  p.  82,  and  Drawing  XX,  opp.  p.  158.) 

The  materials  chosen  for  the  construction  of  roads  and  paths  will  Materials 
have  a  very  considerable  effect  on  their  color  and  texture  and  on  the  °„^p^^"^^ 
definiteness  of  their  outline.  In  the  case  of  equestrian  traffic  in  parks 
and  large  private  estates,  since  in  any  case  a  softer  footing  than  that 
of  a  paved  road  is  desirable,  it  may  be  possible,  without  making  any 
considerable  change  in  the  surface  of  the  ground,  to  construct  a  way  by 
which  horsemen  may  go  from  point  to  point.  By  careful  choice  of 
the  gradient  of  the  ground  and  by  choosing  and  cutting  a  sufficient 
open  lane  among  the  trees,  the  way  may  be  made  good  enough  for  a 
gallop  without  depriving  the  rider  of  the  sensation  of  going  rather 
through  a  natural  landscape  than  along  a  designated  path.  If  there 
is  so  much  riding  that  the  natural  surface  is  badly  torn  up,  some  treat- 
ment of  the  ground  with  tan  bark  or  some  similar  substance  may  im- 
prove both  the  safety  and  the  appearance  of  the  path. 

For  light-traffic  roads  and  for  paths,  gravel,  having  the  advantage 
of  cheapness,  has  also  the  advantage  of  offering  a  wide  choice  of  texture 


228  LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

and  color.  If  it  is  to  have  a  definite  edge,  it  must  be  held  in  by  turf 
or  some  kind  of  curbing,  but  its  normal  indefiniteness  of  edge  is  often 
what  the  designer  most  desires  in  an  informal  scheme.  Broken  stone 
surfaces,  macadam  or  telford  roads  and  paths,  wear  better  than  gravel 
but  are  of  a  less  attractive  texture  on  account  of  the  angularity  of  the 
particles.  Paths  are  sometimes  made  of  broken  stone  or  of  gravel 
without  any  binder,  the  Individual  particles  lying  loose,  allowing  water 
to  percolate  through  them,  and  being  kept  in  order  by  raking  when  dis- 
placed by  traffic.  Such  a  path  has  the  advantage  that  it  is  clean  and 
comparatively  weedless,  but  it  has  the  disadvantage  that  the  material 
flinches  under  foot  and  makes  a  very  unpleasant  crunching  noise  when 

walked  upon. 

There  are  at  present  various  methods  of  construction  of  broken 
stone  and  even  gravel  roads  and  paths  with  some  tar  or  bituminous 
cement,  which  give  a  surface  not  widely  different  in  appearance  from 
that  of  ordinary  gravel  or  macadam,  but  which  bind  the  particles  so 
firmly  together  that  the  surface  will  stand  at  a  steep  slope  without  be- 
ing washed  out  by  rain,  and  the  road  or  path  can  be  brought  to  a 
definite  edge  or  molded  Into  a  definite  gutter  if  desired,  without  any 
structural  need  of  a  curb.     There  are  also  various   tar  and   asphalt 
surfaces  and  various  surfaces  of  cement  which,  though  very  different 
in  their  adaptability  to  different  kinds  of  traffic,  are  alike  in  being 
very  smooth   and  regular.     The  tar  and   asphalt   roads   are  dark  in 
color,  and  though  something  may  be  done  to  improve  this  color  by 
rolling  in  cement  or  sand  while  the  surface  is  soft,  the  lighter  color  will 
seldom   remain  uniform   if  there   is   much   traffic.     Portland   cement 
surfaces  will  almost  inevitably  wear  smooth  under  iron-wheeled  traffic 
and  iron-shod  hoofs.     In  walks,  however,  where  the  destructive  force 
of  traffic  is  less,  pleasant  surfaces  may  be  obtainedla.concrete  if  enough 
pains  be  taken.     Selected  gravel  may  beVcattered  over  the  surface  and 
rolled  in  while  the  surface  is  still  soft.     This  has  the  disadvantage  that 
much  of  the  gravel  has  only  a  slight  hold  on  the  concrete  and  is  readily 
broken  out.     The  concrete  may  be  made  with  a  gravel  selected  for 
color  and  texture,  and  while  the  upper  surface  is  still  soft,  some  of  the 
cement  may  be  removed  with  a  stiff  broom  and  water,  so  revealing  the 
gravel.     This  surface  is  more  permanent.     Concrete  surfaces  may  be 


STRUCTURES    IN    LANDSCAPE 229 

given  a  pleasant  texture,  more  or  less  in  imitation  of  tile,  by  being  scored 
into  small  rectangular  sections,  and  perhaps  having  small  tiles  set  in 
at  certain  intersections  of  these  scored  lines,  in  some  simple  pattern. 
The  color  of  concrete  may  be  modified  by  the  use  of  various  pigments 
in  powdered  form,  but  this  should  be  done  in  moderation,  both  because 
too  much  of  the  pigment  is  likely  to  injure  the  concrete,  and  because 
the  brighter  colors  are  likely  to  be  harsh  and  unpleasant  in  a  pavement. 
Brick  maybe  used  for  roads,  brick  and  tile  for  paths,  giving  a  great 
range  of  tones  of  terra-cotta  and  gray  and  yellow.  The  texture  of  the 
material  itself  gives  a  great  deal  of  choice,  from  the  smooth  surface  of 
tile  through  the  surface  of  water-struck,  sand-struck,  and  wire-cut 
brick  to  brick  surfaces  pressed  into  patterns  and  textures  or  projecting 
lugs.  The  larger  texture  of  the  separate  blocks  and  their  cement 
mortar  joints  gives  an  opportunity  not  only  for  simple  variation  of  sur- 
face but  for  patterns  of  any  degree  of  complexity.  In  roads,  a  simple 
laj'ing  of  the  bricks  breaking  joints,  with  their  long  dimension  across 
the  road,  is  usually  best.  Any  pattern  of  recognizable  forms,  ex- 
cept perhaps  two  stripes  accenting  the  sides  of  the  road,  is  likely  to 
be  wasted  in  a  long  road,  particularly  if  the  traffic  is  fast.  In  paths, 
many  interesting  patterns  may  be  wrought  out  by  the  use  of  brick  or 
tile  or  both  in  combination.*  In  larger  paved  areas  at  the  junction 
of  paths  or  at  the  foot  of  steps,  or  on  terraces,  for  instance,  where  some 
further  interest  of  surface  is  desirable,  more  elaborate  patterns  may  be 
used  and  even  a  greater  diversity  of  material,  perhaps  with  the  intro- 
duction of  slabs  of  marble  or  of  glazed  tile  in  various  colors.  Stone 
laid  in  flat  slabs  is  a  paving  which  lends  itself  particularly  to  the  con- 
struction of  garden  paths  and  which  is  much  used  for  this  purpose, 
especially  in  England.  There  is  a  great  choice  of  color  and  texture,  and 
the  more  the  slabs  are  worn,  the  better  they  are  likely  to  appear;  in- 
deed, some  particularly  pleasant  walks  in  our  modern  American  gardens 
have  been  made  from  the  worn  and  discarded  stones  of  the  sidewalk 
of  a  nearby  city.  Stone  slab  paving  may  be  arranged  in  formal  shapes 
or  it  may  be  laid  as  it  comes  from  the  quarry,  rectilinear  only  where 
it  comes  on  the  outside  edge  of   the  walk.     When  laid  in  loam,  the 

*  See  illustrations  in  Jekyll  and  Weaver,  Gardens  for  Small  Country  Houses,  Chapter 
XV,  Methods  of  Paving,  p.  1 71-178. 


230 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


cracks  between  the  stones  may  soon  become  full  of  moss,  and  indeed, 
where  little  traveled,  they  may  be  planted  with  very  low-growing,  rock- 
loving  plants. 

The  restful  green  surface  of  turf  paths,  not  oflFering  much  color  con- 
trast with  other  foliage,  makes  them  especially  suited  both  to  broad 
central  open  spaces,  rather  turf  panels  than  paths,  and  also  to  the 
most  subordinate  paths,  merely  ways  to  go  among  the  flowers.  The 
upkeep  cost  of  such  paths  is  considerable,  if  the  grass  is  kept  smoothly 
cut  and  the  edges  trimmed,  as  is  true  of  all  sod  edges  for  flower  beds, 
for  unless  the  flowers  are  kept  back  from  the  sod  they  overshadow  it 
and  destroy  it  in  places.  When  paths  of  diflterent  width  and  impor- 
tance form  parts  of  a  pattern,  this  relative  interest  may  be  recognized 
by  the  choice  of  their  surfacing  material.  A  path  along  a  terrace 
might  be  stone-paved,  the  main  garden  paths  might  be  of  gravel,  and 
the  subordinate  paths,  among  the  flower  beds,  of  grass. 


CHAPTER  XI 

TYPES  OF   LANDSCAPE   DESIGNS 

When  the  landscape  architect  comes  to  apply  to  the  actual  problems  Landscape 
which  he  handles  professionally  the  knowledge  with  which  his  experi-  ^f^^^J-     , 

,         ,  J        r  1  L I  According  to 

ence  has  provided  him,  he  tries  to  meet  the  demands  oi  each  problem  Typical 
with  a  design  which,  though  almost  necessarily  sacrificing  some  factors  Uses 
which  are  theoretically  desirable,  combines  on  the  whole  the  maximum 
of  esthetic  and  economic  excellence  possible  for  him  to  create  under  the 
particular  circumstances.*  These  circumstances  are  the  local  condi- 
tions of  topography,  soil,  climate,  and  so  on,  the  financial  means  avail- 
able, the  preferences  of  those  whom  the  landscape  architect  serves  as 
to  the  appearance  and  expression  of  the  design,  and  the  economic  uses  f 
to  which  the  design  is  to  be  put,  with  their  resultant  fixing  of  the  sizes 
and  shapes  of  many  parts  of  the  composition.  No  two  problems  are 
ever  exactly  alike,  but  very  many  problems  arise  in  which  people  of  the 
same  general  habits,  ideals,  and  social  condition  desire  land  to  be  ar- 
ranged for  use  and  enjoyment  of  much  the  same  kind.  Beauty  of  ap- 
pearance may  be  sought  in  many  different  ways,  and  where  one  kind  of 
beauty  proves  to  be  impossible  with  the  sizes  and  shapes  necessary  to 
be  used  in  the  design,  another  kind  may  be  attained,  perhaps  at  a  dif- 
ferent scale  and  with  a  different  esthetic  expression.  Each  typical 
well-defined  use,  however,  has  its  more  or  less  characteristic  effect  on 
the  composition,  no  matter  what  the  other  circumstances  may  be. 
The  result  of  this  fact  is  that  the  ordinary  work  of  the  landscape  ar- 
chitect falls  into  classes  most  readily  according  to  use,  and  where  this 
use  is  a  common  one,  —  one  In  which  the  habits  of  men  are  much  alike, 
—  the  designs  which  serve  this  use  will  have  much  in  common  and  may 
well  be  discussed  together.      Some  of  the  types  of  landscape  designs 

*  Cf.  Chapter  III,  p.  27.  t  Cf.  Chapter  II,  p.  18. 

231 


232  LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

according  to  use  which  naturally  occur  in  the  practice  of  landscape  ar- 
chitects in  our  time  and  in  our  condition  of  society  are  :  —  the  garden  ; 
the  private  estate;  the  "land  subdivision,"  or  developrnent  of  land 
for  residential  use ;  the  country  club  and  country  hotel  grounds ;  the 
grounds  of  colleges  and  institutions,  hospitals,  and  other  public  or  semi- 
public  building  groups ;  the  grounds  of  public  buildings  ;  exposition 
grounds  ;  amusement  parks  ;  zoological  parks  and  botanical  gardens  ; 
cemeteries  ;  playgrounds  ;  the  smaller  intown  parks  ;  the  larger  coun- 
try parks  on  the  outskirts  of  our  cities,  and  the  great  landscape  reser- 
vations scattered  throughout  the  country. 

It  is,  of  course,  quite  impossible  in  an  introduction  to  the  study  of 
landscape  design  to  discuss  all  the  classes  of  designs  which  meet  even 
all  the  more  important  uses  of  our  modern  American  society.  We  shall 
consider  in  this  chapter  four  types  of  landscape  designs  :  the  garden,  the 
estate,  land  subdivision  for  residential  purposes,  and  landscape  parks 
and  reservations.  These  types  are  chosen  because  they  may  exemplify 
both  humanized  and  naturalistic  design,  and  because  they  show  the 
meeting  by  the  private  citizen  of  two  of  his  most  important  needs,  his 
dwelling  and  his  private  outdoor  esthetic  pleasure,  and  the  meeting  by 
the  community  of  the  needs  of  the  citizens  for  amenity  of  dwelling  and 
for  outdoor  recreation.  These  examples  show,  too,  the  way  in  which  the 
field  of  landscape  architecture  merges  into  those  of  horticulture,  archi- 
tecture, engineering,  and  city  planning;  and  In  the  section  on  land 
subdivision,  the  discussion  considers  how  far  it  Is  possible  to  translate 
landscape  beauty  Into  terms  of  economic  value,  to  create  it  at  a  certain 
cost  and  to  sell  it  In  the  market  at  a  profit. 


PART   I 

THE  GARDEN 

Definition  and  use  of  the  word  '"garden"  —  Esthetic  characteristics  of  a 
GARDEN  —  Inclosure  —  Plants  in  the  garden  —  Unity  of  effect  of  whole  garden  — 
A  garden  recognizably  a  work  of  design  —  Formal  and  non-formal  arrange- 
ments —  Ways  of  giving  a  garden  distinctiveness  —  Choice  of  style  — 
Composition  of  the  garden  —  Its  compositional  elements  —  Inclosure  ma- 
terials —  Retaining  walls  and  banks  —  High  boundaries  :  their  composition 
and  decoration  —  The  house  as  part  of  the  garden  boundary  —  Garden 
"floor"  hl\terlals  —  Typical  compositional  arrangements  of  the  garden  floor 
—  Objects  marking  points  of  interest  in  the  garden  composition  — 
Suitability  of  different  objects  to  this  purpose. 

In  literature,  and  in  common  use,  "garden"  has  been  a  very  much  Definition  and 
overworked  word.  It  has  meant,  to  the  horticulturist,  any  place  good  j^'  °J 
for  plants ;  to  the  suburban  land-owner,  almost  any  area  for  outdoor  ''Garden" 
restful  pleasure  ;  to  the  poet,  a  place  for  meditation,  with  certain  associ- 
ations with  the  past ;  to  the  landscape  architect,  a  unit  of  design  which 
has  certain  characteristic  beauties  and  appropriate  functions.  The 
word  has  acquired  such  different  meanings,  and  such  various  associ- 
ations, that  it  is  impossible  to  speak  of  a  garden  in  any  general  sense, 
without  suggesting  a  number  of  attributes  that  are  not  necessarily 
characteristic  of  a  garden.  On  this  much,  however,  in  a  broad  way, 
almost  every  one  is  agreed  :  that  a  garden  is  a  man-made,  bounded, 
outdoor  area,  containing  plants.  Now  we  are  not  interested  in  the 
definition  for  itself,  nor  primarily  are  we  interested  in  what  different 
objects  have,  in  times  past,  been  called  gardens.  We  are  discussing  a 
fairly  definite  landscape  unit,  which  ser\-es  a  purpose  not  served  by 
any  other  unit,  which  takes  its  place  in  the  scheme  of  the  suburban 
countn,^  estate,  large  or  small,  which  produces  its  own  special  effects, 
and  for  which,  in  spite  of  the  great  ambiguity  of  the  word,  the  best 
general  term  is  "garden." 

233 


234 


LANDSCAPE   DESIGN 


Esthetic 
Characteristics 
of  a  Garden 


Inclosure 


The  landscape  designer  is  naturally  most  interested  in  those  gar- 
dens which  are  works  of  art ;  that  is,  those  gardens  which  are  made 
with  some  consideration  of  their  pleasant  esthetic  effect.  For  our  pur- 
poses as  designers,  therefore,  we  may  well  consider  what  seem  to  be 
desirable  esthetic  characteristics  which  a  garden  may  have,  suitable  to 
our  times  and  customs.  In  its  effect  on  the  beholder,  a  garden  is  typi- 
cally a  place  of  leisurely  restful  enjoyment,  a  retreat  from  the  noise 
and  hurry  of  the  outside  world,  offering  a  succession  of  beauties  and 
pleasant  interests ;  and  interests  and  beauties  of  this  peaceful  kind 
are  hardly  to  be  found  anywhere  so  readily  and  so  fully  as  in  the  de- 
velopment and  changing  natural  growth  of  flowering  plants  and  in  our 
association  through  them  with  the  large  and  inevitable  forces  of  Nature. 

A  garden  should  be  a  single  unity,  involving  a  certain  feeling  of 
defined  extent ;  largely  to  enable  it  to  produce  this  effect  it  should 
be  inclosed,  or,  at  least,  recognizably  segregated  from  the  rest  of  the 
landscape.  It  should  have  plants  growing  in  it,  though  not  necessarily 
"flowering"  plants.  These  plants,  and  the  other  materials  which  are 
used,  should  be  arranged  in  an  esthetic  composition,  and  this  compo- 
sition should  be  evidently  the  work  of  man. 

Let  us  discuss  these  points.  We  say  that  a  garden  must  be  inclosed, 
bounded,  sufficiently  segregated  from  the  landscape  about  it.  Now  it 
may  be  so  segregated  by  being  completely  surrounded  by  5ome  screen, 
high  enough  to  hide  all  the  outside  objects.  It  may  lie  in  the  courtyard 
of  a  building.  It  may  be  inclosed  by  a  wall  or  a  hedge  of  an  informal 
planting,  so  high  that,  to  any  one  inside  of  the  garden,  the  outside  world 
is  entirely  cut  off.  Similarly,  the  screen  around  the  garden  may  be  a 
lower  wall  or  hedge,  but  behind  it  may  be  a  tall  tree  mass  or  something 
of  less  definite  form  which,  nevertheless,  completely  blocks  any  view 
from  the  garden.  Any  such  segregation  as  this  leaves  the  designer  as 
free  as  he  ever  can  be  to  make  his  garden  as  though  it  existed  in  a 
world  of  its  own. 

Again,  the  boundary,  though  in  effect  completely  surrounding 
the  garden,  may  allow  of  glimpses  into  other  areas,  which,  nevertheless, 
are  so  definitely  segregated  from  the  garden  that,  though  they  may  be 
parts  of  the  same  general  scheme,  they  are  evidently  not  intended  to 
be  part  of   the  same   visual   unity.     Certain  views   into  other  units 


THE     GARDEN 235^ 

through  narrow  openings,  or  certain  partial  views  over  the  surround- 
ing screen,  need  not,  necessarily,  spoil  the  sense  of  segregation  of  the 
garden. 

Or,  there  may  be  a  screen  along  only  a  part  of  the  boundary.  The 
garden  may,  for  instance,  be  limited  by  a  retaining  wall  or  bank  on  one 
side,  over  which  a  view  may  be  had  into  another  area  to  which  the 
garden  is  related  as  a  part  of  the  same  schematic  composition,  or  into 
a  distant  landscape,  related  to  the  garden  scheme  only  in  some  less 
obvious  way.  The  segregation  in  this  case  may  be  sufficiently  expressed 
by  the  obvious  difficulty  of  access  across  the  retaining  wall  or  bank 
from  the  garden  to  the  lower  level  beyond.  Such  an  arrangement  may 
allow  a  visual  relation  of  the  garden  to  other  units,  without  destroying 
the  feeling  of  unity  of  the  garden  itself.  The  garden  may  conceivably 
serve  as  a  foreground  for  the  scene  beyond,  the  enframement  which 
directly  and  physically  incloses  the  garden  serving  as  the  frame  of  a 
picture,  the  central  interest  of  which  is  the  view  outside  of  the  garden. 
Or  the  area  outside  the  boundary'  may  make  much  less  appeal  to  the 
attention  than  does  the  garden  within,  and  so  the  garden  may  gain  a 
sense  of  ampleness  and  freedom  while  still  remaining  the  center  of  in- 
terest of  the  whole  scene.  The  result  particularly  to  be  avoided  is, 
of  course,  such  an  arrangement  of  the  composition  that  the  attention 
wanders  from  one  area  to  another  of  a  different  effect,  without  settling 
upon  some  one  as  dominant  in  the  design. 

Again,  exceptionally,  the  garden  may  be  inclosed,  not  by  any  con- 
tinuous line,  but  by  a  series  of  separate  objects  :  a  colonnade,  a  row 
of  tree  trunks  bearing  overarching  foliage,  a  row  of  clipped  evergreens. 
Where  such  a  boundary  lies  at  right  angles  to  the  line  of  sight,  it  di- 
versifies the  view  but  does  not  entirely  interrupt  it ;  where  the  line 
of  separate  objects  lies  nearly  parallel  to  the  line  of  sight,  they  may  be 
so  foreshortened  one  upon  another  in  perspective  as  to  form  a  complete 
screen  :  a  double  function  in  design  which  is  at  times  extremely  de- 
sirable, and  which  is  not,  of  course,  at  all  confined  to  the  garden  in  its 
application. 

Almost  any  one  will  agree  that  a  garden  is  an  area  which  contains  Plants  in  the 
plants.     We  do  hear  of  a  "garden  of  colored  sands,"  even  a  "garden  ^'^''^^^ 
of  statuary,"  but  here  the  term  is  really  used,  for  lack  of  a  better,  to 


236 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Unity  of  Effect 
of  Whole 
Garden 


A  Garden 
Recog7iizably 
a  Work  of 
Design, 


signify  merely  a  unit  of  landscape  design.  To  most  people  the  greatest 
beauty  of  plants  is  their  flowers.  And  it  is  natural  that  most  of  the 
gardens  in  the  world  which  are  intended  to  be  beautiful  should  be 
wholly,  or  partly,  flower  gardens.  But  plants  have  other  beauties, 
and  a  garden  is  really  none  the  less  a  garden  for  depending  primarily 
for  its  attraction  on  the  color  of  leaves  or  of  brilliant  fruit,  on  the  con- 
trast of  evergreen  and  deciduous  foliage,  on  tree  form,  or  on  the  beauty 
of  evergreens,  turf,  walks  and  walls,  and  water,  and  the  beauty  of  their 
arrangement. 

A  garden,  as  we  have  said,  should  impress  the  beholder  as  one  unit ; 
if  such  a  landscape  design  consists  of  several  different  segregated  areas, 
it  is  better  to  call  it  a  series  of  gardens  than  to  call  it  a  garden.  Of 
course,  a  garden,  or  any  other  landscape  unit,  for  that  matter,  can  sel- 
dom be  seen  all  at  once.  The  observer  is  normally  inside  of  a  garden, 
and  part  of  the  garden  is  likely  to  be  hidden,  or  at  least  out  of  the 
observer's  angle  of  vision.  The  test  of  the  unity  of  the  garden,  there- 
fore, will  be  not  entirely  the  perfection  of  any  one  view,  but  the  effect 
on  the  observer  of  what  he  sees  from  several  viewpoints,  the  final  con- 
ception which  he  takes  away  with  him  of  the  garden  as  one  thing, 
physically  and  esthetically. 

A  garden  should  be,  and  should  appear  to  be,  the  work  of  man.  A 
naturalistic  area  which  looks  as  though  it  had  come  about  purely  by 
the  operations  of  nature,  or  an  area  which  has  really  so  come  about, 
would  be  called  a  garden  only  by  a  simile.  Man's  will  may  appear  in 
the  design  of  the  garden,  however,  in  two  quite  different  modes  of 
organization.*  The  garden  may  be,  in  the  common  and  loose  term, 
formal ;  that  is,  it  may  depend  for  its  organization  and  its  consequent 
beauty  on  recognizable  forms,  in  repetition,  sequence,  and  balance, 
in  the  simpler  and  more  mathematical  ways,  particularly  in  symmetry. 
(See  Drawing  III,  opp.  p.  36.)  Or,  on  the  other  hand,  without  at  all 
attempting  to  make  the  garden  look  as  though  it  were  a  work  of  nature 
alone,  man  may  strive  to  get  beauty  in  repetition  and  sequence  and  bal- 
ance without  dealing  in  definite  and  geometrical  forms.     (See  Plate  4.)! 

*  Cf.  Chapter  IV,  p.  34. 

t  Compare  the  formal  and  informal  gardens,  given  in  Drawing  XXX,  opp.  p.  260, 
and  Drawing  XXXII,  opp.  p.  274,  and  also  the  main  lawn  in  Drawing  XXXI,  opp. 


THE    GARDEN  237 

In  the  formal  design  the  different  areas  in  the  garden,  the  different  Formal  and 
flower  beds,  walks,  and  so  on,  will  have  definite  and  recognizable  j^l^ngements 
formal  outlines.  We  shall  use  definitely  clipped  and  edged  sod,  at 
least,  and  perhaps  stone  or  brick  edgings,  in  order  that  these  forms  on 
which  the  essence  of  the  design  depends  shall  be,  as  they  must  be,  rec- 
ognizable and  definite.  The  objects  which  are  most  important  in  the 
garden,  to  which  the  interest  is  led  by  the  other  features  in  the  design, 
must  almost  necessarily  be  more  definite  still,  more  obviously  man- 
made,  still  further  wrought  out  in  their  forms.  (See  Plate  29.)  And 
we  are  likely  to  choose  for  these  positions  architectural  or  sculptural 
objects,  because  it  would  be  very  rare  indeed  that  so  loose-textured  a 
thing  as  a  tree  or  an  evergreen  shrub,  even  a  clipped  tree  or  shrub, 
would  be  important  enough,  formal  enough,  to  dominate  the  rest  of 
the  design. 

In  so-called  informal  design  we  have  a  less  possibility  of  use  of  ar- 
chitectural and  sculptural  objects.  Naturally,  we  cannot  arrange  many 
formal  objects  in  the  same  informal  design  :  their  definiteness,  if  they 
were  formally  related,  would  make  the  design  formal ;  if  they  were  in- 
formally related,  it  would  make  the  design  confused.  Our  informal 
designs,  therefore,  will  be,  with  some  exceptions,  made  of  informal 
material,  such  as  trees,  shrubs,  and  flowering  plants.  We  are  still 
obliged  to  get  unity,  as  we  have  said,  in  repetition,  sequence,  and 
balance,  but  we  have  intentionally  put  aside  the  possibility  of  getting 
that  repetition,  or  sequence,  or  balance  in  an  obvious  and  symmetrical 
way.  It  will  be  something  more  occult,  something  less  easy  to  do,  and 
less  easy  to  perceive,  and  as  the  organization  of  the  design  is  less  striking, 
our  attention  will  at  first  fall  the  more  on  the  objects  themselves  which 
make  up  the  design ;  the  beauty  of  the  individual  plants  will,  at  least 
at  first  glance,  tell  for  more  as  the  beauty  of  arrangement  of  the  area 
made  up  of  plants  is  less  obvious. 

The  choice  of  the  main  mode  of  organization  of  his  garden,  whether  ^'ays  ofGiv- 
it  is  to  be  formal  or  informal,  will  usually  be  made  plain  to  the  designer  ^f^^^^^/^j'!^^"  , 
by  the  general  organization  of  the  whole  property  of  which  the  garden 
forms  only  a  part,  and  by  the  topography  and  the  size  and  shape 

p.  268,  which  is  in  a  sense  a  translation  into  informality  of  the  formal  garden  of  Draw- 
ing XXX. 


238 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

relations  of  the  area  which  is  to  be  used  as  a  garden.  Often,  as  in  all 
landscape  designs,  topographic  conditions,  cleverly  overcome  or  taken 
advantage  of,  will  give  a  greater  originality  and  interest  to  the  scheme 
than  the  designer  would  be  likely  to  get  without  the  stimulus  of  the 
difficulties. 

If  the  designer  has  the  opportunity  of  making  several  gardens  on 
one  estate,  or  if  he  is  working  for  several  clients  in  the  same  neighbor- 
hood, and  he  does  not  wish  to  repeat  an  effect,  he  may  cast  about  for 
ways  to  give  each  garden  some  distinction  of  its  own.  The  main  form, 
deliberately  chosen  or  forced  upon  the  designer  in  a  general  way  by  out- 
side considerations,  may  serve  as  a  sufficient  mark  of  individuality, 
though  it  is  rare  that  individuality  need  stop  with  form.  In  any  case, 
if  the  main  form  is  to  be  insisted  on,  the  interior  arrangement  should 
accent  and  display  it.  A  square  or  circular  garden  might  well  have  a 
central  feature  and  a  radial  direction  of  attention ;  a  long  and  narrow 
garden  might  have  features  at  each  end  with  an  unobstructed  view 
between  them. 

The  season  of  greatest  beauty  can  well  be  the  particular  thing 
pitched  upon  to  characterize  a  garden.  We  can  have  a  spring  garden, 
a  summer  garden,  a  fall  garden.  Our  choice  in  this  regard  will  be 
motived  by  the  mode  of  life  of  our  client,  whether  he  is  to  enjoy  the 
garden  throughout  the  year,  or  whether  he  is  to  see  it  only  at  certain 
seasons. 

The  material,  both  the  structural  material,  the  rock  used  in  the  walls, 
for  instance,  and  particularly,  of  course,  the  plant  material,  the  pre- 
dominating planting,  will  put  a  definite  stamp  upon  a  garden  :  we  can 
have  a  wall  garden,  a  garden  of  rock  plants,  a  rose  garden,  a  lily  garden, 
and  so  on.  Or,  we  may  confine  ourselves  to  one  color  of  flower,  at  least 
for  a  certain  season  :  we  can  have  a  blue  garden,  a  white  garden,  a 
pink  garden,  in  the  spring,  and  later  in  the  year  other  colors  may 
appear. 

A  garden  may  have  a  definite  effect  because  it  calls  up  some  partic- 
ular association,  as,  for  instance,  an  old-fashioned  New  England  gar- 
den, with  everything  in  it  carefully  chosen,  carefully  wrought  out,  to 
increase  that  one  associational  beauty.  Of  course,  it  must  have  beauty 
of  form  and  color  also  in  any  case,  but  it  will  have  all  the  greater  unity 


THE     GARDEN 


•39 


for  being  definitely  reminiscent  of  one  prototype  throughout.  Some- 
times, exceptionally,  this  matter  of  association  can  be  carried  further. 
We  might  have  a  Shakespeare  garden  :  a  garden  which  contained  as 
far  as  possible  all  those,  and  only  those,  flowers  which  are  mentioned 
in  Shakespeare.  That  would  be  carrying  association  rather  far,  be- 
cause, of  course,  Shakespeare's  botany,  like  Shakespeare's  geography, 
was  largely  a  matter  of  his  immediate  artistic  need. 

If  the  garden  is  visually  related  to  the  house,  —  as  it  often  is,  and  Choice  of 
usually  should  be  when  it  is  formally  designed,  —  the  style  of  the  house  ^^ 
will  influence  the  style  of  the  architecture  or  sculpture  appearing  in  the 
garden,  and,  to  a  very  considerable  extent,  fix  the  kind  of  organization 
of  the  whole  scheme  which  will  be  possible  under  those  circumstances. 
If  no  dominant  object  of  already  determined  style  thus  fixes  the  style 
of  the  garden,  and  if  the  associational  value  of  some  historic  style  is  de- 
sired, that  style  would  normally  be  chosen  for  the  garden  which  best  ex- 
presses the  mode  of  organization  arising  from  the  local  circumstances 
and  the  general  esthetic  effect  that  the  designer  seeks.  These  same 
considerations  we  discuss  later  in  reference  to  the  estate. 

If  the  garden  is  to  be  recognized  as  being  physically  one  unit,  it  is  Composition  of 
evident  that  enough  of  its  boundary  must  be  perceived  from  within  ^^^  Garden 
to  define  its  main  shape.     It  cannot  have  features  in  the  middle  of 
it  so  large  that  the  part  of  the  garden  behind  these  middle  features  is 
secluded  and  thrown  out  of  the  composition.     And  so  it  comes  about 
that  by  far  the  commonest  type  of  small  garden  is  an  arrangement  which 
is  open  in  the  middle  —  with  some  not  too  large  central  feature,  per- 
haps —  and  with  its  elements  of  greatest  height  near  its  outer  bound- 
ary.    Such  a  garden  is  a  sort  of  outdoor  room,  decorated  on  the  walls 
and   on  the   floor,    and    appropriately    furnished    with    objects    inter- 
esting in  themselves  and  related  to  the  main  scheme  of  the  design. 
We  can  consider  the  inclosure :   the  bounding  wall  or  hedge,  its  height  Its  Compo- 
and  its  form  which  give  the  main  form  to  the  garden,  its  composition  ■^'''"*<'' 
and  minor  points  of  interest  and  their  relations  to  the  other  elements 
of  the  scheme.     We  can  consider  the  floor  and  its  composition  and 
decoration  :  the  paths,  the  beds,  the  pools,  and  the  various  ways  of  sub- 
dividing the  garden  floor  into  pleasant  proportions   and   interesting 
patterns.     And  again,  we  can  consider  the  various  individual  objects 


240 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Inclosure 

Materials 


Retaining 
Walls  and 
Banks 


of  interest  in  the  garden  :  such  objects  as  may  be  placed  at  the  point  of 
convergence  of  several  paths,  or  which  may  mark  an  axis  or  strengthen 
a  corner ;  objects  which  attract  attention  to  themselves,  and  thus 
make  more  important  the  position  in  which  they  are  set.  Since  formal 
composition  is  much  easier  to  visualize  and  to  describe  and  discuss, 
and  since  very  many  gardens  are  essentially  formal,  we  will  continue 
our  discussion  of  the  garden  in  terms  of  formal  design,  but  it  should  be 
borne  in  mind,  nevertheless,  that  gardens  need  not  be  formal,  and 
moreover  that  much  of  what  we  say  in  relation  to  design  in  formal 
shapes  is  applicable,  with  proper  modifications,  to  design  in  informal 
shapes,  no  less  intentionally  determined,  but  not  to  be  so  definitely 
described. 

It  is  possible,  as  we  have  seen,  that  a  garden  should  seem  to  be 
sufficiently  inclosed  and  segregated*  although  it  is  open  on  one  side 
so  that  the  visitor  may  look  from  it  into  another  unit  of  the  larger  de- 
sign ;  but  if  the  garden  is  to  be  itself  satisfactorily  unified  under  these 
circumstances,  there  must  still  be  a  sufficient  line  of  demarcation  on 
the  open  side.  A  low  hedge  or  fence  may  be  sufficient,  a  low  retaining 
wall  may  be  ample,  where  the  view  rises  from  the  garden,  as  where, 
for  instance,  the  garden  lies  at  the  foot  of  an  open  slope.  A  low  fence 
or  wall,  however,  is  likely  to  seem  unmotived  if  the  elevation  of  the 
ground  surface  is  the  same  on  both  sides  of  it.  An  elevation  of  the  sur- 
face of  the  garden  above  that  of  the  outside  unit,  even  though  this 
difference  of  elevation  is  very  slight,  will  usually  serve  as  a  sufficient 
boundary.  It  is,  exceptionally,  possible  to  mark  the  break  in  grade 
merely  by  a  grass  bank,  or  by  a  retaining  wall  with  its  coping 
practically  flush  with  the  surface  of  the  garden.  More  commonly, 
however,  some  parapet  —  hedge,  wall,  rail,  or  balustrade*  —  extending 
above  the  surface  of  the  garden  will  be  necessary,  both  as  a  guard 
for  the  top  of  a  dangerous  wall  and  as  a  stronger  marking  of  the 
garden  boundary,  especially  as  seen  from  within.  For  practical  pur- 
poses this  parapet  may  be  as  low  as  fifteen  inches  if  it  be  sufficiently 
wide,  and  it  seldom  is  more  than  waist  high.  Otherwise  its  height  will 
be  determined  by  its  proportions  in  the  whole  design  of  the  garden, 

*  For  a  discussion  of  kinds  of  inclosures,  —  hedges,  walls,  fences,  and   so  on,  — 
see  the  sections  devoted  to  these  in  Chapters  IX  and  X. 


THE     GARDEN  241 

and  by  its  relations,  as  seen  from  the  outer  side,  to  the  retaining  wall 

beneath  it. 

Where  a  garden  boundan,'  rises  to  more  than  the  height  of  the  High 

eve,  it  usually  is  of  itself  definite  in  shape  and  marks  the  definite  shape  ^°^V'^^![^" ' 

'     '  •  .  ,  .  .  ...    I  hnr  Com- 

of  the  garden.     The  views  across  the  garden  termmate  agamst  it,  and  position  and 

the   important  points  in  these  various  views  are  recognized  by  ap-  Decoration 

propriate  decoration  and  change  of  shape  in  the  boundar>^  structure. 

If  the  form  of  the  garden  itself  is  to  be  particularly  accented,  the 

corners  of  the  garden  boundan.^  may  well  be  made  stronger.     If  a  main 

broad  axial  view  terminates  against  the  inclosure,  its  center  may  be 

marked  by  a  shelter,  a  pergola,  a  semi-circular  bay  in  the  garden  wall, 

perhaps   half  inclosing  a  pool.     (See  Plate  30.)     Where  a  narrower 

view,  like  a  vista  down  the  axis  of  a  path,  terminates  against  the  bound- 

ar}%  it  may  be  marked  by  a  gate  in  the  wall,  a  hooded  seat  against  it, 

a  niche  with  a  statue,  or  perhaps  a  wall  fountain.     If  the  feature  be  a 

gateway,  the  interest  in  it  may  consist  of  a  glimpse  out  of  the  garden, 

so  narrow  as  not  to  interrupt  the  effect  of  continuity  of  the  boundary 

or,  whether  or  not  the  gate  admits  of  a  view  out  of  the  garden,  the 

interest  may  lie  primarily  in  the  gateway  itself  as  a  decorative  feature 

of  the  wall.     (See  Drawing  XIII,  opp.  p.  100.)     It  often  happens  that 

a  gateway  assumes  great  importance  In  the  design,  perhaps  recognizing 

the  intersection  of  the  main  axis  with  the  boundan.-.     (See  Tailpiece 

on  p.  23.) 

Sometimes  the  boundan,"  structure  of  a  garden  may  be  planned  to 
give  a  sense  of  inclosure,  but  not  to  be  in  itself  conspicuous,  screening 
the  outside  world,  but  serv'ing  only  as  a  background  for  more  interest- 
ing objects  within  the  garden.  A  vista  down  a  path  running  towards 
such  a  boundar}-  might  be  terminated  by  a  free-standing  statue  or  a 
seat  merely  backed  and  protected  by  the  bounding  hedge  or  fence  or 
wall.  Where  complete  inclosure  of  the  garden  itself  is  desirable,  but 
where  the  site  of  the  garden  commands  from  one  end  a  good  view  into 
the  adjoining  landscape,  it  may  be  possible  to  construct  a  shelter  which 
will  serve  as  a  terminal  feature  of  the  main  axis,  a  dominant  object  in 
the  surrounding  wall  and  a  continuation  of  its  inclosing  mass,  but  which, 
from  its  farther  open  side,  will  also  command  the  view  and  furnish  a 
shady  place  from  which  the  view  may  be  seen. 


242 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


The  House 
as  Part  of 
the  Garden 
Boundary 


Garden 

''Floor" 

Materials 


Where  one  fagade  of  the  house  forms  also  a  wall  of  the  garden  or  a 
major  part  of  it,*  this  facade  of  the  house  must  be  considered  in  its 
relations  to  the  garden  design.  In  a  formal  scheme  it  is  normally  sym- 
metrically related  to  the  whole  garden  and  the  main  axis  of  the  garden 
is  terminated  by  a  feature  in  the  fa9ade  of  the  house.  (See  Drawing 
III,  opp.  p.  36,  and  compare  Plate  i.)  It  is  much  better,  where  it 
can  be  done  with  due  regard  to  the  architectural  planning  of  the  house, 
to  have  this  feature  a  door,  a  French  window,  or  a  group  of  windows 
recognizing  a  room  in  the  house  which  commands  the  garden.  A 
chimney  or  any  solid  space  between  two  windows,  if  it  be  on  the  axis 
of  the  garden,  is  very  likely  to  give  an  unpleasant  effect  of  blindness 
and  of  splitting  the  composition  of  the  house  facade  into  two  parts. 
Where  the  facade  design  of  the  house  is  necessarily  unrelated  to  the 
axis  of  the  garden,  although  the  house  mass  is  approximately  sym- 
metrical upon  this  axis,  it  may  be  possible  to  set  the  garden  at  a  lower 
level  and  to  interpose  between  it  and  the  house  a  terrace  with  a  flight 
of  steps  properly  designed  to  relate  axially  to  the  garden  below,  but  to 
lead  easily  to  the  exits  from  the  house  above.  Where  a  house  dominates 
a  garden,  it  affects  the  scale  of  the  whole  garden  design,  and  any  other 
structures  which  face  upon  the  garden  must  be  studied  in  their  mass 
relation  to  the  house.  If  a  garden  shelter  so  situated,  when  made  of  a 
size  appropriate  to  its  use,  appears  too  small  in  relation  to  the  house, 
it  may  still  be  possible  to  treat  the  shelter  as  a  decorated  and  roofed 
portion  of  the  surrounding  wall,  and  so  b}^  sacrificing  its  importance  as 
an  independent  building  prevent  its  competition  with  the  larger  house. 

Whether  these  boundary  structures  are  to  be  walls  or  lattices  or 
fences  or  hedges  will  depend  on  the  choice  of  expression  and  the  choice 
of  expenditure  which  the  designer  makes  for  his  whole  scheme.  A 
design  may  be  expressed  in  any  of  these  terms  with  no  less  of  excellence 
so  long  as  the  expression  is  in  each  case  consistent. 

As  we  have  seen,  if  the  garden  is  to  appear  as  a  single  area  Inclosed, 
it  must  be  sufficiently  open  within  so  that  its  farther  boundary  maybe 
to  some  extent  visible.  The  floor  of  the  garden  then  will  serve  two 
purposes  in  the  design  ;  it  is  a  foreground  over  which  is  seen  the  com- 
position made  by  the  farther  boundary  and  whatever  free-standing 

*  Cf.  p.  259  under  the  Estate. 


THE     GARDEN  243 

objects  are  seen  against  it;  and  it  is  itself  a  surface  to  be  decorated  in 
patterns  of  turf  and  path  and  pool  and  flower  bed,  and  a  setting  for 
the  various  free-standing  objects  which,  while  not  interrupting  the 
open  unity  of  the  whole  garden,  are  in  themselves  objects  of  interest 
and  further  accent  the  pattern  of  the  garden  floor.  (See  Plate  30, 
Drawing  XX,  opp.  p.  158,  and  Tailpiece  on  p.  23.) 

This  pattern  will  be  built  up  primarily  in  relation  to  the  main  axes 
of  the  garden  and  the  views  along  them,  in  relation  to  the  paths  and 
where  they  must  lie  in  order  to  scxrve  reasonably  well  the  lines  of  traffic 
in  the  garden,  in  relation  to  the  practically  necessan,'  sizes  of  shelters 
and  walls  and  steps  and  flower  beds,  and  under  these  restrictions  in 
relation  to  the  considerations  of  pure  design  which  would  make  a 
decorative  flat  composition  out  of  the  elements  at  hand. 

In  its  recognition  of  the  most  important  views  within  it,  the  garden  Typical 
is  likely  to  be  arranged  in  one  of  two  ways  :   there  may  be  an  object  of  Compositional 
interest  at  each  end,  and  the  important  view  may  traverse  the  whole  of  the  Garden 
length  of  the  garden,  terminating  on  one  or  the  other  of  these  objects  P^oo^ 
(see  Plate  30)  ;    or  some  object  of    interest  may  occupy  the  center  of 
the  garden,  important  enough  to  dominate  the  scheme,  but  not  large 
enough  to  destroy  the  total  unity  within  the  inclosure.     (See  Plate  29.) 
In  the  first  case  the  center  of  the  garden  will  be  entirely  open,  or  at  most 
decorated  with  objects  small  enough  and  low  enough  not  to  destroy  its 
effect  of  openness  ;  in  the  second  case,  the  sense  of  one  dominant  object 
enframed  by  the  rest  of  the  scheme  would  probably  lead  to  an  open 
space  in  the  middle  of  the  garden  in  which  this  dominant  object  is  set. 
The  first   arrangement   develops   a   strong  feeling    of    axial    relation ; 
the  second  produces  rather  the  feeling  of  all  the  outer  parts  of  the  gar- 
den being  related  inward  towards  a  center. 

The  floor  of  this  central  portion  will  be  decorated  with  treatments 
of  a  flat  surface  as  we  have  seen,  —  pools,  lawn,  paths,  low  flower  plant- 
ing, or  carpet  bedding.  As  far  as  the  accommodation  of  traffic  is  con- 
cerned there  will  probably  be  a  tendency  to  run  a  path  from  end  to  end 
of  the  garden  on  the  axis.  Except  in  the  case  of  a  long  and  narrow 
scheme,  rather  a  flower-bordered  allee  than  a  garden,  such  an  arrange- 
ment is  likely  to  be  bad.  A  ven.-  broad  path  surface,  even  if  it  be  as 
interesting  a  surface  as  a  stone-paved  walk,  is  uninteresting  by  com- 


244 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Objects 

Marking 
Points  of 
Interest  in  the 
Garden 
Composition 


parison  with  the  flower  beds,  and  a  narrow  walk  in  the  midst  of  a 
reasonably  broad  scheme  is  very  likely  to  produce  the  effect  estheti- 
cally  of  splitting  the  design  into  two  distinct  halves.  It  is  usually  bet- 
ter therefore  to  place  a  panel  of  some  width  symmetrically  on  the  axis, 
—  pool  or  turf  area  or  low  flower  bed,  —  and  to  have  the  paths  run 
symmetrically  around  it  as  borders,  being  properly  proportioned  to  it 
for  that  purpose.  (See  again  Plate  30.)  For  further  intricacy  of 
design  and  greater  definiteness  of  outline,  the  paths  may  be  curbed  with 
a  stone  or  brick  edging,  the  flower  beds  bordered  with  a  line  of  par- 
ticularly formal-growing  plants.  Farther  away  from  the  open  center 
of  the  scheme  may  be  other  paths  running  between  beds  of  higher 
planting. 

The  different  main  areas  in  a  garden  design  may  be  characterized 
not  only  by  differences  of  surface  treatment  but  also  by  differences  of 
level.  The  center  panel  may  be  sunk  and  there  may  be  raised  paths 
around  the  outer  portions  of  the  garden  near  the  boundary.  These 
differences  of  elevation  must  not  be  so  great  as  to  make  in  effect  several 
areas  out  of  what  is  intended  to  be  one.  The  permissible  difference  of 
elevation  is  of  course  partly  a  matter  of  its  proportion  to  the  size  of 
the  whole  garden  and  to  the  separate  units,  but  in  any  case  it  can  sel- 
dom be  so  great  that  a  person  standing  at  the  lower  level  is  unable  to 
see  the  surface  of  the  level  above.  In  larger  designs  sunk  panels  are 
sometimes  used  even  of  greater  depth  than  this,  where  the  area  so 
sunk  often  contains  and  enframes  perhaps  a  fountain  or  other  inter- 
esting object  which  can  thus  best  be  looked  at  and  which,  set  at  its 
lower  level,  does  not  interrupt  a  long  view  from  end  to  end  of  the 
garden. 

Just  what  the  total  pattern  will  be  in  which  the  designer  arranges 
his  various  ground-covering  materials  ought  to  depend  on  the  condi- 
tions of  the  particular  garden  and  in  the  work  of  a  good  designer  would 
seldom  be  twice  alike.* 

Besides  the  larger  structures  in  the  design  of  a  garden,  like  per- 
golas, shelters,  or  the  facades  of  other  buildings,  there  are  also  many 
objects  of  less  size,  but  each  attracting  interest  in  its  own  way  and  so 

*  For  a  discussion  of  the  individual  elements  of  the  floor  pattern,  —  pools,  flower 
beds,  paths,  and  so  on,  —  see  the  sections  devoted  to  these  in  Chapters  IX  and  X. 


THE    GARDEN      245 

itself  dominating  some  subordinate  part  of  the  whole  composition. 
In  every  case,  the  function  of  objects  of  this  kind  is  so  to  attract,  to 
hold,  to  direct  the  interest  as  to  explain  and  unify  and  at  the  same 
time  diversify  the  whole  composition. 

One  object  may  occupy  the  center  of  a  garden,  standing  free  in  its 
own  grass  plot,  and  being  from  all  points  of  view  in  the  garden  the  most 
interesting  single  thing,  to  which  the  rest  of  the  design  is  tributary. 
A  sundial,  a  statue,  a  fountain,  in  the  midst  of  a  simple  garden,  is  an 
example  of  such  an  arrangement. 

One  object  may  form  the  focal  point  of  a  vista,  dominating  a  con- 
verging pictorial  composition  and  furnishing  a  sufficient  motive  for  the 
direction  of  a  path  and  the  bounding  masses  of  foliage. 

Objects  may  mark  an  axis  by  lying  at  its  opposite  ends  like  two 
gates  in  opposite  walls  of  a  garden,  even  though  there  be  no  axial  path 
between  them;  or  objects  may  mark  an  axis  by  being  symmetrically 
disposed  about  it,  like  two  cypress  trees  on  opposite  sides  of  a  flight  of 
steps  or  two  lines  of  lime-trees  enframing  a  central  grass  panel. 

A  number  of  objects  placed  at  the  corners  or  dominant  points  of  a 
formal  shape  may  define  and  accent  this  shape  and  make  it  more  im- 
portant in  the  composition.  Such  a  use  would  be  served  by  vases  or 
clipped  topiary  pyramids  or  statues,  placed  at  the  corners  of  a  grass 
plot  or  a  flower  bed. 

It  is  noticeable  that  the  different  objects  which  we  find  in  gardens  Suitability 
are  differently  suitable  to  these  functions.     A  statue  may  serve  them  ^^^^'^^[^^"^,-^ 
all :  it  may  stand  alone  at  a  central  point  of  interest ;  it  may  terminate  purpose 
a  vista ;    it  may  stand  with  another  on  opposite  sides  of  a  gate ;    four 
statues  may  mark  a  central  grass  plot ;   a  row  of  statues  may  stand  one 
on  each  pier  of  a  balustrade ;   two  statues  each  in  a  niche  or  standing 
free  on  a  pedestal  at  opposite  ends  of  a  walk  may  definitely  mark  a 
center  line.     Sundials,   bird-baths,    gazing   globes    and,   usually,   free- 
standing fountains  are  likely  to  be  best  employed  as  dominant  objects 
each  in  its  own  part  of  the  design,  with  no  other  of  its  kind  in  the  com- 
position.    This  is  partly  because  of  their  use  which  makes  more  than 
one  unnecessary,  partly  because  they  are  so  shaped  as  to  be  good  in 
appearance  from  all  sides,  and  partly  because  it  has  become  traditional, 
as  it  were,  to  use  them  in  this  way.     A  vase,  an  urn,  a  plant  in  tub  or 


246  LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

pot,  topiary  work,  even  a  tree  with  particularly  striking  form,  while 
seldom  important  enough  in  the  design  to  stand  as  the  independent 
center  of  interest,  or  terminus  of  a  vista,  may  serve,  each  in  its  own 
way,  any  of  the  other  uses  which  we  have  just  mentioned.  It  is  evi- 
dent that  in  the  choice  of  objects  to  be  used  for  these  purposes  the  de- 
signer will  be  influenced  by  the  scale  relation  of  the  object  to  its  sur- 
roundings, by  its  congruity  in  other  respects,  and  by  the  amount  of 
dominance  over  its  surroundings  which  he  wishes  it  to  express.  Seats  of 
various  kinds  have  their  best  use  as  terminal  points  for  paths  and 
vistas  :  they  are  not  interesting  enough  as  objects  to  stand  free  like  a 
sundial,  and  their  use  as  resting  places  makes  them  the  natural  terminus 
of  a  walk.  Very  commonly,  where  a  larger  object  is  desired,  or  for 
purposes  of  shelter,  a  seat  may  be  placed  against  a  wall  and  hooded 
with  a  lattice,  or  it  may  form  a  part  of  an  arbor  or  a  shelter  of  still 
greater  pretensions.  Statues  in  niches  or  wall  fountains  are  particu- 
larly adapted  to  the  termination  of  a  vista  against  a  boundary,  but 
any  object  of  interest  which  is  correct  in  scale  may  complete  a  vista, 
—  a  sundial,  for  instance,  may  serve  in  this  way,  for  several  paths  which 
relate  to  it  radially,  while  serving  also  as  a  central  point. for  the  whole 
garden. 

There  is  always  temptation  to  terminate  any  straight  path  with 
some  kind  of  vista  point,  but  if  this  path  is,  for  instance,  part  of  the 
rectangular  path-border  which  surrounds  a  central  grass  plot  and  the 
paths  on  each  side  of  the  grass  plot  are  intervisible,  then  its  larger 
function  in  the  design  is  that  it  serves  thus  as  a  border,  and  a  vista  point 
at  the  end  of  any  straight  run  of  the  border  might  well  be  a  confusion 
of  the  design  rather  than  an  enhancement-  of  it.  In  his  use  of  all  these 
various  objects  of  interest,  the  designer  must  take  care  that  by  unduly 
accenting  subordinate  points,  he  does  not  destroy  the  main  unity  of  his 
design. 


PART  II 

THE    ESTATE 

The  estate  as  expressing  the  owner's  desires  —  Physical  elements  of  the 
ESTATE  —  The  house  —  Effect  of  interior  arrangements  on  house  form  • —  House 
form  as  affected  by  choice  of  style  —  Location  and  orientation  of  house  —  The 
HOUSE  terr.\ce — -The  forecourt  —  The  garden  as  a  unit  of  the  estate 

—  Pleasure  buildings  —  House  service  areas  —  Estate  service  buildings 
AND  areas  —  The  greenhouse  —  Reserve  and  vegetable  gardens  —  Tennis  courts 

AND    areas  for  OTHER  RECREATIONS  —  ThE  OPEN  LAWN TrEE-SHADED  AREAS 

—  Natural  character  units  —  Access  —  Approach  roads  —  Paths  —  The 
design  of  the  whole  estate —  Choice  of  site  for  an  estate  —  Apportionment 
of  estate  area  into  the  units  required. 

In  developing  a  piece  of  land  for  his  home  in  the  suburbs  or  in  the  The  Estate 
country,  a  man  expects  the  property  to  satisfy  certain  fairly  definite  'Y  ^^P^"^*^S 
desires.     Often    he    has    been    a    city  dweller,    who    has  been  looking  Desires 
forward  through  half  a  lifetime  to  this  fruition  of  his  work  and  increas- 
ing prosperity.     For  him  commonly  his  out-of-town  property  represents 
ease,  leisure,  space,  outdoor  beauty,  —  something  to  be  paid  for  and 
enjoyed,  but  seldom  something  which  itself  produces  any  considerable 
income. 

Often,  whether  country  bred  or  city  bred,  the  landowner  intends  to 
use  his  property  wholly  or  dominantly  as  a  source  of  revenue.  This 
commonly  entails  the  use  of  a  considerable  area  of  land,  if  the  ordinary 
agricultural  operations  are  to  be  carried  on  at  a  profit.  But  some  part 
of  the  whole  area  must  be  set  aside  for  comfortable  and  civilized  living, 
and  in  every  part  enjoyment  may  be  a  by-product  if  not  the  end  pri- 
marily sought.  As  landscape  architects,  we  are  more  directly  in- 
terested in  those  considerations,  economic  and  esthetic,  which  concern 
the  pleasant  living  of  the  owner,  rather  than  in  those  relating  to  the 
earning  capacity  of  his  land.  But  though  there  is  more  scope  for  the 
designer's  fancy  in  those  estates  whose  owners  can  afi^ord  to  seek  en- 

247 


248  LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

joyment  without  carefully  counting  its  cost,  his  commoner  problem 
and  in  a  way  his  greater  service  to  the  community  is  in  those  cases 
where  such  beauty  as  is  produced  must  lie  in  skillful  esthetic  handling 
of  objects  and  areas  economically  necessary,  rather  than  in  extensive 
construction  for  the  sake  of  beauty  alone. 

In  the  great  majority  of  designs  for  private  places  which  the  land- 
scape architect  makes,  in  our  time  and  country,  the  owners  are  not 
very  widely  different  one  from  another  in  their  ways  of  living  and  in 
their  more  important  requirements  in  use  and  enjoyment  for  living  on 
their  land.  Each  man  will  wish,  first  of  all,  a  proper  and  convenient 
house  in  scale  with  the  life  which  he  expects  to  lead.  He  will  also 
wish  to  own  a  piece  of  land  which,  together  with  the  house,  satisfies  his 
sense  of  possession  and  plainly  expresses  his  ownership.  Usually  a 
part  of  that  expression  will  be  some  sense  of  boundary  between  what  he 
owns  and  the  neighboring  properties.  He  will  want  a  place  for  hos- 
pitality, for  entertainment  of  his  friends ;  and  for  himself  and  for  his 
friends  he  will  want  a  variety  of  interesting  things  to  look  at,  and  a 
number  of  interesting  things  which  can  be  done.  Further,  he  will 
wish  to  enjoy  the  expanse  of  free  spaces,  he  will  be  glad  to  have  a 
piece  of  property  from  which  a  distant  view  is  obtained.  He  may  wish 
to  take  more  or  less  active  exercise  of  various  kinds ;  he  will  also  wish 
an  opportunity  to  sit  and  rest,  at  his  ease.  He  may  wish  to  make  his 
life  as  much  as  possible  that  of  a  "country  gentleman,"  and  so  he  may 
develop  at  least  a  part  of  the  estate  as  a  farm,  even  though  he  knows 
that  it  may  never  be  a  financially  successful  farm. 

Then  there  will  be  also  in  the  minds  of  different  owners  innumerable 
different  and  special  desires.  One  man  may  wish  a  special  place  for 
his  children  to  play.  Another  man  may  be  particularly  interested  in 
golf,  and  may  desire  at  least  a  putting  green,  or  a  small  golf  course. 
One  man  may  build  a  private  squash  court,  another  a  swimming  pool, 
or  a  skating  rink,  and  so  on.  The  form  in  which  the  owner  will  real- 
ize all  these  desires,  or  some  of  them,  will  vary  from  the  country  estate 
of  many  acres  to  the  unpretentious  suburban  lot,  according  to  the  means 
and  the  taste  of  the  owner. 

Now  the  ordinary  owner  has  not,  himself,  the  special  knowledge 
necessary  to  make  his  estate  properly  satisfy  these  desires ;  indeed,  it 


THE    ESTATE  249 

often  happens  that  the  whole  matter  is  quite  new  to  him,  and  he  is  only 
dimly  aware  of  what  pleasures  he  may  be  able  to  obtain  from  his  pos- 
sessions. There  is,  therefore,  in  most  cases,  room  for  a  professional  de- 
signer. And  this  designer  has  the  task  of  interpreting  the  wishes  of 
his  client,  of  giving  them  proper  expression  in  the  client's  estate.  But 
the  designer  should  feel  that,  after  all,  it  is  the  will  of  his  client  which 
he  is  expressing.  The  good  designer  has  the  technical  training  and 
the  artistic  sensitiveness  which  enable  him  to  express  his  client's  will. 
He  has,  also,  the  experience  in  such  matters  which  enables  him  to  know 
ahead  of  time  what  desirable  things  are  possible  of  attainment  in  a 
given  case,  and  he  can  therefore  guide  his  client  in  his  desires.  In  this 
sense,  the  fundamental  relation  between  the  owner  and  the  designer 
is  that  the  designer  is  enabling  the  owner  to  get,  in  the  most  economical 
and  in  the  most  beautiful  way,  the  things  which  the  owner  himself 
wishes  to  obtain. 

There  may  be  found,  on  an  estate  of  some  size,  the  house ;  the  house  Physical 
terrace  or  veranda  or  other  floored  or  paved  outdoor  area  near  the  f/l^^^^^^f^ 
house;  the  forecourt  or  carriage  turn;  the  garden;  pleasure  build- 
ings ;  house  service  areas ;  service  buildings ;  areas  for  the  use  and 
upkeep  of  the  grounds ;  areas  for  sports  and  games ;  some  large  open 
area,  often  a  lawn ;  woods,  or  some  tree-covered  area ;  and,  in  the 
larger  estate,  other  natural  units,  —  brooks,  ponds,  hills,  and  so  on. 
Also  there  must  be  provision  for  access  for  wheel  and  foot  traffic, 
pleasure  and  service,  connecting  all  these  areas  and  making  them 
economically  part  of  one  scheme. 

The  sequence  in  which  we  have  stated  these  objects  is  not  a  sequence 
of  importance,  but  is  only  for  convenience  in  discussion.  Their  im- 
portance is  different  for  different  owners  and  for  different  situations, 
and  of  course  they  do  not  all  occur  in  all  designs.  The  plans  given  as 
examples  (Drawing  XXX,  opp.  p.  260,  DrawingXXXI,  opp.  p.  268,  Draw- 
ing XXXII,  opp.  p.  274,  and  Drawing  XXXVII,  after  p.  356)  show 
several  different  ways,  out  of  unlimited  possibilities,  in  which  these  units, 
or  some  of  them,  may  be  combined  in  the  estate.  In  our  discussion 
of  the  estate  we  shall  have  in  mind  rather  the  property  of  medium  or 
large  size  than  the  smaller  house  lot,  because  in  the  larger  area  the  prin- 
ciples in  which  we  are  here  interested  are  better  exemplified,  since  the 


250 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

design  is  not  so  definitely  tied  by  considerations  of  use  and  available 
space.  But  the  difference  in  the  design  of  estates  of  various  sizes  is 
usually  one  of  degree  rather  than  of  kind.  The  general  principles  will 
apply,  with  modifications,  to  estates  of  all  sizes  ranging  from  the  pri- 
vate estate  so  small  that  the  house  and  other  buildings  dominate  the 
design  inevitably,  to  larger  estates  the  expression  of  which  is  less  re- 
stricted, and  in  which,  in  many  cases,  units  of  design  organized  ac- 
cording to  landscape  characters  rather  than  according  to  the  will  of 
man  may  be  developed. 

In  these  larger  estates  the  relative  esthetic  importance  of  the  various 
considerations  is  quite  different  from  what  it  is  in  smaller  estates. 
The  house  and  its  architectural  surroundings,  while  still  the  focus  of 
the  whole  design,  still  the  object  of  most  importance  for  its  size  in  the 
whole  scheme,  is  no  longer  dominant  by  its  visual  aspect  as  it  inevitably 
is  in  the  house  lot.  In  other  words,  in  the  larger  scheme  the  house  is 
only  one  of  many  objects  which  go  to  form  the  whole  design,  and  the 
dominance  of  the  house,  in  so  far  as  it  is  dominant,  is  due  to  its 
associations,  to  its  greater  precision  and  elaboration  of  detail,  and  to 
the  radiation  throughout  the  design  of  lines  of  view  and  necessary 
lines  of  traffic  to  and  from  the  house. 
The  House  The  internal  arrangement  of  the  house  is  important  to  the  whole 

plan  of  an  estate,  both  because  of  its  effect  on  the  shape  of  the  house, 
and  so  on  its  mass  as  an  object  in  the  design,  and  also  on  account  of 
the  relation  of  the  areas  about  the  house  to  its  doors  and  windows, 
and  to  the  views  from  it. 

The  larger  the  house  is,  the  more  possibilities  of  arrangement  of 
rooms  there  will  be,  because  commonly  the  more  servants  will  be  kept, 
and  so  short  access  for  service  within  the  house  is  less  important, 
and  particularly  because  the  possibility  of  building  a  number  of  wings 
will  give  light  and  air  to  various  rooms  in  various  different  arrange- 
ments. But  in  the  house  where  space  must  be  saved  for  reasons  of  econ- 
omy, certain  typical  arrangements  of  the  interior  have  been  found  to 
be  the  most  desirable  for  the  usual  family,  living  as  our  present  civiliza- 
tion causes  them  to  live.  In  ordinary  out-of-town  houses,  general 
schemes  like  the  following  are  common.  (Compare  the  ground  floor 
plans  of  the  houses  in  the  estate  plans  given.) 


THE    ESTATE 251 

Entered  from  the  front  door  may  be  the  entrance  hall  which,  in  the 
formal  and  axial  type  of  house,  often  runs  through  the  house  to  a  door 
on  the  other  side.  From  this  hall  there  will  be  stairs  to  the  fioor  above. 
Opening  off  the  front  hall  are  the  living  room,  reception  room,  library, 
billiard  room,  or  whatever  may  be  the  rooms  of  this  kind,  in  name  and 
use,  that  the  living  of  the  family  requires,  and  the  dining  room,  which 
is  connected  with  the  kitchen  by  the  butler's  pantry. 

Entered  from  the  back  door  will  be  the  back  entry  from  which  the 
back  stairs  give  access  to  the  upper  part  of  the  house  and  to  the  serv- 
ants' bedrooms.  Opening  off  the  back  entry  are  the  kitchen  and 
perhaps  the  laundry  and  the  servants'  dining  room.  The  back  hall 
and  the  front  hall  should  usually  be  directly  connected.  The  arrange- 
ment of  the  servants'  quarters  upstairs  should  be  independent  of  the 
rest  of  the  rooms  on  this  floor,  but  the  back  hall  upstairs  should  con- 
nect with  the  front  hall  upstairs.  In  this  way  the  various  front  rooms 
branch  off  the  front  hall,  and  the  service  rooms  are  related  similarly  to 
the  rear  hall,  so  that  all  traffic  may  be  provided  for  in  the  halls,  with- 
out disturbing  the  particular  use  of  any  room  by  devoting  it  in  part 
to  traffic  into  another  room. 

Now  this  or  any  other  chosen  interior  arrangement  will  have  its  Effect  of 

effect  on  the  exterior  form  of  the  house.     Since  the  living  room,  the  Intenor 

.  ,,,.,,..  11J  rr  -Arrangements 

reception  room,  the  dmmg  room,  and  the  billiard  room  should  open  on  q„  House  Form 

the  entrance  hall,  and  since,  for  the  sake  of  light,  a  house  can  hardly 
contain  in  its  thickness  more  than  two  rooms  and  a  hall,  it  is  frequently 
desirable  that  the  entrance  hall  should  have  rooms  on  both  sides  of  it, 
which  means  that  except  in  unusually  large  houses  the  front  door  is 
usually  more  or  less  in  the  middle  of  one  of  the  long  sides.  If  the 
scheme  of  the  house  and  surroundings  is  axial,  the  center  line  of  the 
front  turn  or  forecourt  may  be  the  center  line  also  of  the  main  hall, 
and  be  continued,  on  the  other  side  of  the  house,  as  the  main  axis  of  the 
gardens  or  of  whatever  other  formal  development  may  be  arranged 
there.  Where  the  house  is  built  on  the  "H"  or  "E"  plan,  the  fore- 
court may  be  included,  wholly  or  in  part,  between  the  wings,  as  a  house 
terrace  or  a  small  garden  might  be,  on  the  other  side  of  the  house. 

Where,  as  is  so  frequently  the  case  in  modern  houses,  the  life  of 
the  family  goes  on  primarily  in  the  living  room,  which  is  much  the 


252 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

largest  room  in  the  house,  the  light  for  this  room  and  the  views  from  its 
windows  may  well  be  first  considered,  and  the  shape  and  arrangement 
of  the  house  modified  to  make  them  as  good  as  possible. 

The  service  quarters  should  have  ample  light  and  air,  but  they 
should  not  block  the  light  or  the  view  from  the  living  portions  of  the 
house.  This  brings  about  the  common  arrangement  of  the  service 
quarters  as  an  "L,"  projecting  usually  from  the  northeast  corner  of 
the  house.  If  the  house  is  large  enough,  and  the  style  of  architecture 
permits,  this  "L"  may  run  off  at  an  angle  of  forty-five  degrees.  It 
may  thus  relate  diagonally  to  the  main  mass  of  the  house,  just  as  the 
outdoor  service  areas,  and  the  planting  or  other  screens  of  the  main 
view,  often  will  be  found  to  relate,  as  we  shall  see.  However,  it  will 
often  be  impossible  to  avoid  having  the  service  wing  make  one 
boundary  of  some  desirable  view,  or  of  some  area  which  is  used 
by  the  owner  and  not  by  the  servants.  Under  these  circumstances 
it  will  usually  be  possible  to  have  only  high  windows  on  the  side  of 
the  service  wing  which  lies  next  to  the  important  view,  or  otherwise 
to  make  the  service  wing  as  inconspicuous  and  as  little  intrusive  as 
possible.  It  is  often  better  to  use  the  area  thus  partly  inclosed  by  the 
service  wing  as  a  forecourt,  or  in  some  such  way  devote  it  to  access 
and  traffic,  rather  than  to  use  it  for  any  purpose  which  devotes  it  for 
considerable  lengths  of  time  to  purposes  of  rest  or  leisurely  enjoyment. 

In  designing  a  house  the  architect  usually  first  considers  what  size 
and  shape  and  arrangement  of  rooms  will  be  necessary  to  provide 
the  client,  inside  of  the  amount  of  money  which  the  client  can  spend  for 
his  house,  with  the  living  conveniences  which  he  desires,  suited  to  the 
climate  of  the  region  and  the  particular  exposure  of  the  house.  Often 
the  practical  solution  of  this  problem  will  produce  a  house  of  a  certain 
general  shape  and  size,  irrespective  of  any  other  consideration,  and 
perhaps  the  shape  and  size  so  determined  must  be  accepted,  no  matter 
what  other  considerations  there  may  be.  There  are,  however,  a 
number  of  other  factors  which  ought  distinctly  to  motive  the  choice 
of  the  shape  of  the  house.  The  house  is  only  one  unit  among  many  in 
the  design,  even  though  it  is  usually  the  dominant  unit.  And  in  the 
choice  of  its  form,  the  architect  should  consider  the  whole  composition 
of  which  the  house  forms  a  part,  which  includes,  also,  the  trees  around 


THE     ESTATE 253 

it,  the  approaches,  the  shape  of  the  ground  on  which  it  is  set.  The 
choice  of  the  form  of  the  house  may  be  made  because  it  is  obviously 
desirable  in  the  large  composition  of  the  whole  estate  to  put  a  tur- 
reted  and  aspiring  house  on  the  top  of  the  steep  hill  which  has  been 
chosen,  or  perhaps,  on  the  other  hand,  to  put  a  long,  low  house  in  the 
flat  plain  which  is  occupied  by  the  estate  which  is  being  designed. 

Very  important  in  its  effect  on  the  shape  of  the  house  is  the  choice  House  Form  as 
of  the  architectural  style.  To  be  sure,  if  the  economic  necessities  of  Y<f^.p„  . 
the  house  produce,  inevitably,  a  long,  low,  rambling  form,  then  the 
architect  can  choose  only  among  such  styles  as  express  themselves  in 
forms  of  that  kind ;  and  similarly,  if  the  house,  for  economic  reasons, 
works  out  to  be  small  on  plan,  but  tall  and  narrow,  the  style  will  be 
fixed,  or  at  any  rate  restricted,  by  this  consideration.  Then,  too, 
there  will  be  the  accepted  style  of  the  region,  local  traditions,  local 
materials,  and  so  on,  which,  in  the  absence  of  good  reasons  to  the  con- 
trary, ought  at  least  to  be  seriously  considered  in  choosing  the  style 
of  a  new  house.  Again,  and  fundamentally  important,  there  will  be 
the  taste  of  the  client,  and  particularly  the  mode  of  life  which  he  is  to 
live  —  how  the  house  is  to  be  used  :  whether  it  is  to  be  often  occupied 
by  gay  parties  of  guests,  or  whether  it  is  to  be  the  quiet  abode  of 
some  studious  person.  So  the  choice  of  style  may  be  to  a  con- 
siderable extent  motived  by  the  similarity  of  the  life  of  the  owner 
of  the  new  house  to  the  life  of  the  people  who  created  the  particular 
style  which  is  being  considered. 

Another  factor  in  determining  the  form  of  the  house  will  always  be 
the  taste  of  the  designer.  This,  at  times,  has  been  given  too  free  a 
rein  ;  some  designers  seem  to  feel  that  the  work  of  designing  a  house 
is  purely  a  matter  of  the  expression  of  their  own  personality,  as  the  work 
of  painting  a  picture  or  making  a  statue  might  be.  The  better  attitude 
in  that  regard  is,  as  we  have  already  seen,  that  planning  a  house  or  lay- 
ing out  an  estate  is  interpreting  the  personality  of  the  client,  bearing  in 
mind,  however,  that  the  designer  probably  has  an  artistic  ability  superior 
to  that  of  the  client,  and  that  the  designer  is  responsible  for  making  the 
result  a  work  of  art. 

The  location  and  orientation  of  the  house  will  be  determined  pri-  Orientation  of 
marily  by  the  factors  of  access,  light,  view,  topography,  and  the  deter-  House 


254 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


mined  units  into  which  the  surroundings  of  the  house  are  to  be  di- 
vided.     (See  Drawing  XXIX,  opposite.) 

The  traffic  from  the  street  to  the  living  portion  of  the  house  should 
be  sufficiently  direct ;  and  where  it  can  be  arranged  without  too  great 
sacrifice,  the  pleasure  traffic  and  the  service  traffic  should  be  separated. 
In  any  case,  the  roads  should  not  unpleasantly  break  up  the  areas  seen 
from  the  living  rooms  of  the  house.  The  service  traffic  should  be 
reasonably  direct  to  the  service  quarters,  and  should  be  as  little  con- 
spicuous as  possible  from  the  house  and  from  all  portions  of  the  grounds. 
All  this  should  be  considered  before  the  house  location  and  orientation 
is  decided,  for  a  small  change  in  house  location  may  make  or  mar 
a  good  road  arrangement. 

In  the  northern  parts  of  the  United  States,  the  winters  are  long  and 
severe  enough  to  make  a  southern  aspect  desirable  at  that  season. 
And  in  the  greatest  heat  of  the  summer,  when  the  sun  is  to  be  avoided 
rather  than  sought,  a  great  many  families  are  away  from  their  winter 
homes.  The  west  wind  is  usually  a  fair-weather  wind,  and  a  view  into 
the  sunset  is  to  be  desired.  Odors  from  the  kitchen  should  not  be  car- 
ried by  the  wind  to  the  rest  of  the  house.  The  wind  most  likely  to  do 
this  is  the  fair-weather  wind  of  summer,  when  the  windows  are  open,  — 
that  is,  the  south  and  west  wind.  So  the  kitchen  should  preferably 
not  lie  on  the  western  side  of  the  house.  A  southern  and  western  aspect 
is  usually  preferable  for  any  main  room.  The  living  room,  being  the 
most  important,  will  probably  be  given  this  exposure.  Of  course  the 
direction  and  kind  of  the  prevailing  winds  is  different  in  different  re- 
gions, and  this  will  much  modify,  or  perhaps  even  reverse,  the  relative 
desirability  of  different  exposures  in  different  cases.  The  dining  room 
should  face  the  east,  at  least  if  also  used  as  a  breakfast  room.  If 
there  is  a  separate  breakfast  room,  the  dining  room  may  get  the  south- 
ern and  western  sun,  and  the  breakfast  room,  alone,  the  eastern  sun. 
The  kitchen,  though  it  is  likely  to  be  relegated  to  the  northeastern 
corner,  should  have  light  and  air  on  two  sides.  An  ideally  planned 
house  has  no  part  of  it,  except  some  closets,  without  an  outside  window. 

The  outlook  from  all  the  principal  rooms  of  the  house  should  be  as 
well  composed,  and  as  free  from  incongruous  elements  as  may  be.  The 
best  view  into  the  grounds  or  to  a  distant  landscape  should  probably  be 


DIAGRAMS  SHOW}NQ  SOME.  T2J:LAT10N5 

or  THE  OUT-OF-TOV/M  HOUSE. 

AND  ITS  IMMEDIATE  5URKOU/<DING5. 


V 


A  -  T-ROMT  AJ^KOACM  K  ■■RECEPnOAT  R.OOA\ 

S  =  SERVICE   TUR^  U  -LIVmC  ROOA^. 

L-n=  l_AWy<J  K  "^KITCHSyS 

V-VtEXV  T  -TEKRACa 


DRAWING  XXIX 


THE    ESTATE 255 

given  to  the  living  room,  and  as  we  have  seen,  it  should  be,  if  possible, 
into  the  south  and  west.  Service  arrangements  and  service  approaches 
should  not  be  visible  from  the  main  rooms.  Unpleasant  objects  in  or 
beyond  the  property  should  be  screened.  A  test  of  the  perfection  with 
which  these  conditions  have  been  met  within  an  estate  would  be  to 
determine  how  small  a  sector  of  the  whole  property,  viewed  from  the 
house,  is  occupied  by  service  approaches,  service  arrangements  of  any 
kind,  or  objects  unpleasant  to  look  at ;  and  how  large  a  sector  is  pre- 
sented as  an  unspoiled  view  from  the  windows  of  the  living  portions  of 
the  house.  Evidently,  this  requirement  suggests  a  service  approach 
running  in  a  radial  direction  to  the  service  yard,  which,  in  turn,  lies 
radially  outside  the  service  portion  of  the  house.  From  the  point  of 
view  of  the  appearance  of  the  house  from  the  grounds,  there  are  a  num- 
ber of  considerations  which  may  prove  important  in  their  effect  on  the 
location  and  orientation  of  the  house.  This  may  be  affected  by  the 
appearance  of  the  house  across  the  main  lawn  from  the  street,  which 
may  require  parallelism  of  the  house  to  the  street  line  where  the  house 
is  near  the  street.  Perhaps  it  may  be  affected  by  the  formal  relations 
of  the  house  to  the  gardens,  terraces,  etc.,  which,  in  turn,  may  be  fixed 
in  location  by  the  topographic  limitations. 

Where  the  house  is  surrounded  by  a  number  of  units,  like  a  house 
terrace,  a  forecourt,  and  a  garden,  the  problem  of  location  is  one  of 
locating,  not  the  house  alone,  but  the  mass  composed  of  the  house  with 
its  appurtenances.  If  they  are  formal,  the  mass  is  less  flexible,  and 
the  problem  in  this  regard  more  difficult.  In  any  case,  the  questions 
of  access,  orientation,  and  view  as  they  concern  the  house,  and  the 
questions  of  organization  of  the  whole  estate  are  so  bound  up  to- 
gether that  each  aspect  of  the  problem  reacts  on  all  other  aspects, 
and  we  have  no  solution  until  we  have  a  solution  which  meets  all 
these  exigencies  at  once,  or  makes  the  best  possible  compromise 
among  them. 

In  the  relation  of  the  house  and  its  appurtenances  to  the  topography 
there  are  naturally  three  general  types  of  house  location :  hilltop, 
hillside,  and  valley  or  plain.  Each  type  of  location  has  its  effect  on 
the  type  of  arrangement  of  the  house  and  surroundings ;  each  has  its 
own  merits  and  its  own  defects. 


256  LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

A  hilltop  site  is  chosen,  usually,  for  the  view.  It  is  often  difficult 
of  access.  It  is  exposed  to  the  weather,  to  the  cold,  to  the  sun.  There 
is  likely  to  be  difficulty  as  to  water  supply.  There  may  be  lack  of  space 
for  the  units  surrounding  the  house.  There  may  be  a  lack  of  near  and 
intimate  views.  There  may  be  even  a  lack  of  foreground  for  the 
very  important  views  for  which  the  site  was  chosen,  making  the  view 
merely  a  panorama,  —  a  great  expanse,  but  not  a  pictorial  composition. 
And  from  a  hilltop  site  it  is  difficult  to  screen  out  any  neighboring  ugly 
thing,  if  such  there  be  :  the  house  dominates  the  whole  landscape, 
from  it  we  see  what  there  is  to  be  seen  whether  it  is  good  or  bad.  A 
hilltop  site,  therefore,  at  least  a  site  on  a  narrow  hilltop,  is  likely  to 
sacrifice  in  some  degree  a  number  of  the  desirable  attributes  of  a  home 
site  for  the  sake  of  view  and  openness  and  perhaps  coolness,  and  for 
the  importance  of  the  house  as  an  object  in  the  landscape. 

A  hillside  site,  typical  of  the  Italian  villa,  gives  both  shelter  and 
view,  although  the  view  is  on  one  side  only.  If  the  hillside  be  steep, 
there  is,  again,  lack  of  space  for  the  immediate  surroundings  of  the  house. 
Such  a  site  is  likely  to  produce  an  axial  arrangement,  with  the  main 
axis  across  the  contours,  —  that  is,  running  up  and  down  the  hill ; 
and  with  the  long  dimension  of  the  house  parallel  to  the  contours.  The 
orientation,  in  this  case,  will  be  fixed  by  the  location ;  consequently  we 
must  have  in  mind  what  the  inevitable  orientation  will  be  when  we 
choose  our  location,  and  this  orientation  will  determine  the  sun,  view, 
and  breeze  which  are  afforded  the  house.  The  terraces  which  are  very 
likely  to  be  called  for  on  such  a  site  may  run  down  from  the  house,  or 
up  from  the  house,  or  perhaps  both.  The  more  effective  arrangement 
commonly  is  that  running  down  from  the  house,  because,  seen  from  a 
distance,  the  terraces  make  an  architectural  base  for  the  house,  and 
their  level  surfaces  can  be  seen  to  some  extent  from  the  house  terrace. 
On  hillside  sites,  or  on  sites  on  the  top  of  a  slope,  the  house  may  be 
built  in  the  form  of  an  "L"  or  three  sides  of  a  square,  or  it  may  con- 
sist of  a  main  mass  with  two  wings  at  forty-five  degrees ;  the  convex 
side  fitting  the  convex  contours  of  the  hillside,  and  the  concave  shield- 
ing the  entrance  turn  or  forecourt.  The  forecourt  would  thus  lie 
between  the  house  and  the  hill,  and  in  steep  situations  its  wall  oppo- 
site the  house  might  be  a  retaining  wall,  holding  the  slope  of  the  hill. 


THE    ESTATE  ^S7 

The  obvious  difficulties  of  lack  of  room  on  a  steep  hillside,  and  the 
restriction  of  the  view  on  the  uphill  side  of  the  house,  make  the  ideal 
situation  for  a  house  which  dominates  the  hillside  the  military  crest  of 
the  hill,  or  at  least  the  outer  edge  of  some  considerable  flat  area  on 
the  side  of  the  hill.  This  gives  all  the  advantages  of  view  and  open- 
ness on  the  downhill  side,  and  gives  also  all  the  advantages  of  room  for 
the  development  of  the  immediate  surroundings  of  the  house  on  the 
flat  area  on  the  upper  side  of  the  house. 

In  the  valley  or  plain  location  the  choice  of  form  and  arrangement 
of  the  house  and  grounds  is  not  so  definitely  forced  upon  the  designer 
by  the  topography.  The  location  and  orientation  of  the  house  will  be 
determined  more  by  the  other  factors  which  we  have  already  discussed, 
particularly  perhaps  by  the  best  disposition  of  the  whole  estate  into 
its  different  functional  areas,  and  the  relation  of  the  house  to  them. 
But  even  on  approximately  flat  topography  the  designer  will  often  seize 
upon  some  slight  diflterence  of  elevation,  perhaps  to  give  the  house 
greater  dominance,  at  any  rate  to  differentiate  one  area  from  another 
and  to  produce  something  more  than  merely  a  flat  plan  relation  be- 
tween the  building  and  the  rest  of  the  estate. 

The  house  terrace  forms  in  the  design  an  architectural  base  for  the  The  House 
mass  of  the  house,  and  in  use  it  gives  a  small  outdoor  area,  roofed  or  ^^^'^'^^ 
unroofed,  next  the  house,  to  which  some  of  the  functions  of  the  house 
can  be  transferred  in  pleasant  weather.  Naturally,  it  is  related  for- 
mally to  the  house,  and  almost  always  it  is  treated  as  a  part  of  the  ar- 
chitectural design  of  the  house,  being  frequently  paved  and  decorated 
with  architectural  objects,  or  with  foliage  architecturally  treated.  The 
house  terrace  often  serves  to  bring  to  the  door  of  the  house  lines  of 
traffic  which  could  not  come  directly  to  these  entrances  without  in- 
truding on  the  view.  As  the  length  is  parallel  to  the  side  of  the  house 
and  at  right  angles  to  the  view,  the  terrace  is  usually  narrow,  because 
it  must  be  in  scale  with  the  house,  and  because  otherwise  its  outer  edge 
would  probably  interrupt  the  view  from  the  lower  windows.  The  house 
terrace  may  however  be  included  between  two  projecting  wings  of  the 
house,  and  may  even  assume  the  form  of  a  partially  inclosed  court, 
rather  than  that  of  a  narrow  place  of  overlook.  The  transition  between 
the  house  terrace  and  the  grounds  will  be  a  question  of  design  which 


258  LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

cannot  be  decided  except  in  the  individual  case.  The  architectural 
lines  of  the  house  come  down  unbroken  to  the  surface  of  the  terrace. 
The  terrace  may  serve  in  the  design,  as  we  have  said,  purely  as  an 
architectural  base  for  the  house,  and  it  may  be  desirable  that  the 
strong  lines  of  the  terrace  come  down  similarly  to  the  ground  at  its 
base.  But  it  is  often  the  case  that  the  outer  line  of  the  house  terrace 
makes  a  less  sharp  contrast  than  this  with  the  surrounding  grounds. 
Its  retaining  wall  or  bank  may  be  masked  by  planting,  and  its  form 
thus  blended  into  the  surrounding  landscape  forms,  making  a  tran- 
sition between  the  house  and  its  setting  without  unduly  screening  the 
architectural  facade  of  the  house  itself. 
The  Forecourt  The   walled   forecourt    carries    out    the   architectural    lines   of   the 

house  in  a  lower  and  broader  mass  into  the  surrounding  design.  It 
definitely  conceals  and  segregates  the  turn  of  the  front  entrance  drive 
before  the  front  door,  and  often  serves  an  important  function  in  the 
scheme  by  presenting  in  its  entrance  gate  an  object  to  which  the  road 
may  approach  with  an  effect  of  definite  design,  without  the  road 
necessarily  being  related  in  its  direction  to  the  fa9ade  of  the  house 
or  to  the  front  door.  Like  the  house  terrace,  the  forecourt  may  in 
part  be  included  between  two  projecting  wings  of  the  house,  the  end 
facades  of  the  wings  facing  on  the  forecourt  or  outside  of  it  according 
to  its  relative  size.  The  possibilities  in  this  regard  will  be  limited  by 
the  minimum  size  of  the  forecourt,  which  must  be  at  least  sixty  feet 
in  diameter  if  large  automobiles  are  to  turn  in  it  conveniently.  A 
walled  forecourt,  being  a  self-contained  unit,  is  commonly  not  well 
placed  when  between  the  house  and  a  good  view  or  an  open  lawn. 
The  forecourt  seems  more  reasonable  and  effective  when  heavy  woods 
enframe  it,  or  when  its  wall  opposite  the  house  is  a  retaining  wall, 
dominated  by  a  higher  level  of  ground.  The  forecourt  should  be  so 
connected  by  road  with  the  garage  and  stable  that  the  vehicles  for 
the  use  of  the  owner  can  get  to  it  readily,  but  it  should  be  so  ar- 
ranged that  service  trafiic  does  not  go  through  it  on  the  way  to  the 
service  portion  of  the  house.  Its  function  is  that  of  a  traffic  en- 
trance in  any  case,  and  therefore  it  should  usually  not  be  treated  as 
a  garden,  nor  primarily  as  a  place  of  rest  or  leisure.  Its  decoration, 
in  architecture  and  planting,  should  be  rather  such  as  can  be  readily 


\ 


THE    ESTATE  .  259 

grasped  in  a  short  time,  without  particularly  inviting  to  long  enjoy- 
ment of  minor  interests. 

The  garden  is  ideally  a  place  inclosed,  protected,  restful,  a  private  The  Garden  as 
area  for  the  leisurely  enjoyment  of  outdoor  beauty.*     It  has,  therefore,  °'■g^^^^^  "■' 
some  functions  similar  to  some  of   those  fulfilled  by  the  house,  and 
is  in  effect  often  an  outdoor  living  room. 

The  garden  most  commonly  is  located  so  that  it  is  visible  from  the 
house.  It  is  possible,  where  a  house  relates  directly  to  an  informal 
design,  to  have  the  garden,  though  visible  from  the  house,  consist  of  an 
informal  arrangement  of  turf,  flowers,  shrubbery,  and  trees.  More 
usually,  the  closeness  and  dominance  of  the  house  is  likely  to  require 
a  formal  treatment  of  the  garden  and  its  formal  relation  to  the  house, 
and  this  consideration  is  strengthened  by  the  practical  fact  that  fences, 
shelters,  and  flower  beds  are  more  readily  made  and  managed  in  formal 
shapes.  On  the  smaller  estates,  where  the  architectural  mass  of  the 
house  is  inevitably  dominant  and  visible  from  all  parts  of  the  grounds, 
this  is  especially  true,  but  this  relation  will  often  be  desirable  in  the 
case  of  larger  estates  as  well,  not  only  from  the  point  of  view  of  design 
in  grouping  the  various  formal  units  together,  making  the  house  and 
its  immediate  surroundings  a  dominant  unity,  but  from  the  point  of 
view  of  use  in  grouping  together  those  units  which  have  similar  func- 
tions, and  in  arranging  the  most  finely  wrought  and  interesting  units 
of  the  outdoor  design  so  that  they  shall  be  visible  and  easily  accessible 
from  the  place  where  the  owners  spend  most  of  their  time,  —  the  house 
and  especially  the  living  room. 

If  the  garden  is  to  be  a  place  inclosed,  private,  offering  many  small 
interests  in  itself,  It  is  not  easy  to  make  it  serve  also  as  the  best  fore- 
ground for  a  distant  view.  A  flower-decorated  terrace  may  readily 
fulfill  this  function,  but  a  garden  so  used  is  likely  to  lose  some  effect 
of  intimacy.  Whether  the  gain  is  worth  the  sacrifice,  only  a  study  of 
the  particular  case  can  determine.  For  similar  reasons  a  garden  is 
commonly  not  bettered  by  being  made  to  serve  purposes  of  access  for 
any  considerable  traffic,  particularly  for  persons  other  than  the  owners. 
The  treatment  of  a  forecourt  as  a  flower  garden  is  seldom  the  best 
arrangement   possible.     The   garden   may   lie   beyond   the   forecourt, 

*  Cf.  p.  234. 


26o LANDSCAPE     DESIGN 

and  be  accessible  through  it,  if  no  better  location  offers,  but  the  inter- 
position of  public  traffic  between  house  and  garden  is  not  in  itself  de- 
sirable. When  visible  from  the  house,  then,  the  garden  should  com- 
monly be  neither  on  the  approach  side  nor  on  the  view  side,  but  rather 
forming  a  composition  of  its  own,  visible  and  accessible  from  some  one 
room,  or  axial  arrangement  of  rooms,  in  the  house,  and  backed  by- 
some  inclosing  mass.  If  this  relation  is  formal,  it  may  occur  in  one 
or  both  of  two  ways.  The  mass  of  the  garden  may  relate  to  the  mass 
of  the  garden-fagade  of  the  house,  either  by  the  continuation  of  the  lines 
of  the  house  to  inclose  the  garden,  or  simply  by  a  general  symmetrical 
arrangement  of  the  house  and  garden  on  the  same  axis  without  any 
marking  or  accenting  of  this  axis.  Where  the  garden  has  axial  mass 
relation  with  the  house  fagade,  the  very  simple  relation  of  form  ob- 
tained by  prolonging  the  lines  of  the  sides  of  the  house  as  the 
boundaries  of  the  garden  is  apt  to  be  obvious  and  monotonous.  It 
is  commonly  better  to  have  the  garden  wider  than  the  house,  and  to 
relate  the  outer  lines  of  the  garden  to  house  terraces,  porches,  or 
similar  extensions  of  the  house.  On  the  other  hand,  the  main  axis  of 
the  garden  may  be  strongly  marked  and  may  terminate  on  a  strongly 
marked  feature  in  the  house  without  having  the  mass  of  the  house 
symmetrical  about  this  axis.  In  some  cases,  too,  a  satisfactory  formal 
relation  between  house  and  garden  may  be  obtained  by  treating  both 
as  portions  of  one  formal  scheme,  to  the  main  axis  of  which  the  gar- 
den bears  no  very  close  relation,  — ■  for  instance,  the  house  may 
terminate  a  long  upper  terrace  and  the  garden  may  lie  below  and  to 
one  side  of  this  terrace. 

In  our  climate,  where  a  house  is  to  be  used  throughout  the  year, 
the  winter  appearance  of  the  garden  visible  from  the  house  becomes  very 
important,  and  this  militates  against  the  use,  in  such  a  garden,  of  statuary 
or  of  plants  which  must  be  protected  in  winter,  and  makes  unwise  the 
exclusive  use  of  plants  which  disappear  entirely  or  present  only  with- 
ered stalks  in  the  winter.  Such  a  garden  should  contain  enough  ele- 
ments beautiful  in  winter  to  make  a  complete  and  sufficiently  furnished 
design,  at  that  season.  This  means  the  use  of  architectural  features, 
of  trees  and  shrubs,  and  particularly  of  evergreens.  It  is  quite  possible 
to  mark  the  dominant  points  in  a  design  with  evergreens  and  archi- 


THE    ESTATE 26j, 

tectural  features,  things  beautiful  in  winter,  so  that  in  summer  the 
interest  centers  on  the  flowers  enframed  and  formalized  by  the  more 
permanent  material,  and  in  the  winter  there  is  a  formal  design  in 
evergreens  and  vases  and  snow.  Where  the  house  is  used  in  summer 
only,  or  where  the  garden  is  not  visible  from  the  house  and  therefore 
need  not  be  seen  when  not  at  its  best,  the  design  can  of  course  be  made 
solely  for  summer  effect. 

Exceptionally,  a  formally  designed  garden  may  bear  no  relation  to 
the  house,  but  in  that  case  neither  should  be  seen  from  the  other  and 
the  garden  should  form  a  satisfactor}-  unit  of  and  by  itself. 

Where  the  house  is  not  rigidly  symmetrical  in  shape  and  where  per- 
haps the  shape  of  the  area  of  land  that  may  be  devoted  to  a  garden 
does  not  lend  itself  to  formal  development,  or  where,  as  a  matter  of 
choice  of  style  of  design,  no  formal  units  are  considered  desirable  in  the 
scheme  except  the  buildmgs,  the  garden  may  be  quite  informal  in  shape, 
but  still  definitely  related  to  the  house  and  to  certain  important  views 
from  the  house.  The  garden  may  consist  of  an  irregular  open  area 
of  turf  enframed  by  shrubs  and  trees,  decorated  by  flower  borders, 
and  related  to  the  house  perhaps  by  the  fact  that  the  facade  of  the  house 
forms  in  effect  one  wall  of  the  garden  inclosure,  and  probably  also  by 
being  so  arranged  that  the  most  important  view  into  the  garden,  that 
which  traverses  its  longest  dimension  and  terminates  upon  its  most 
interesting  feature,  is  commanded  perhaps  from  the  living  room  of  the 
house.  It  would  be  purely  a  matter  of  definition  where  such  an  area 
ceased  to  be  a  garden  and  could  more  properly  be  called  a  flower-deco- 
rated forest  glade  or  a  flower-decorated  bay  in  the  lawn.  (See  the  in- 
formal areas  in  Drawings  XXXII,  XXXI,  and  XXX,  in  that  order.) 

Pleasure  buildings  on  a  private  estate  may  serve  almost  as  many  Pleasure 
different  purposes  as  the  owner  finds  different  pleasures  in  his  outdoor  Buildings 
possessions.  They  give  shelter  and  shade.  They  form  interesting 
points  to  look  at,  and  to  walk  towards,  in  the  various  compositions  into 
which  the  whole  estate  falls.  They  give  comfortable  resting  places 
from  which  to  enjo}"  a  view  over  the  surrounding  countr}',  or  the  color 
of  an  adjacent  garden,  or  perhaps  the  sight  of  a  game  of  tennis.  They 
provide  facilities  in  connection  with  such  outdoor  activities  as  boating 
and  swimming.     Often  they  form  a  part  of  the  architectural  scheme 


262 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

which  includes  the  house  and  its  appurtenances,  the  house  terrace 
and  a  formally  arranged  garden.  A  pergola  or  vine  arbor  may  run 
out  from  the  side  of  the  house,  dominating  and  bounding  one  side  of 
the  garden,  and  terminating  in  a  shelter,  which  on  one  side  looks  back 
into  the  inclosed  peacefulness  of  the  garden  and  on  the  other  overlooks 
a  distant  view.  Or  a  shelter  may  form  the  dominant  feature  at  the 
end  of  the  garden  away  from  the  house,  terminating  the  main  view  into 
the  garden,  and  echoing  the  architectural  effect  of  the  house.  Or, 
in  a  scheme  which  contains  long  vistas  or  enframed  formal  views,  the 
terminal  feature  may  be  a  structure  which  may  serve  also  other  pur- 
poses of  pleasure  or  use. 

These  shelters,  or  pavilions,  or  gazebos,  or  summer-houses,  or 
whatever  we  please  to  call  them,  will  be  fixed  as  to  their  minimum 
size  by  their  absolute  scale ;  that  is,  by  their  relation  to  the  size 
of  a  man.  They  must  be  large  enough  to  give  a  reasonable  height 
for  a  man  to  stand  in  and  a  reasonable  space  for  several  people  to 
sit  about  in. 

When  one  of  these  structures  forms  a  part  of  the  wall  of  a  garden 
which  also  relates  to  a  house,  we  have  the  question  of  relative  scale 
between  the  house  and  the  shelter.  If  the  garden  is  small  and  the  shelter 
is  in  scale  with  it,  it  is  obvious  that  there  is  danger  of  having  the  little 
shelter  overpowered  by  the  size  of  the  house.  In  other  words,  there 
will  come  a  point,  as  we  reduce  the  size  of  our  scheme,  where  we  shall 
be  obliged  to  choose  as  an  object  to  decorate  our  inclosure  of  the  gar- 
den, or  terminate  a  vista,  not  a  shelter,  but  an  arch  or  doorway  or  a 
hooded  seat,  or  something  of  that  kind,  which  can  be  small  without  being 
out  of  scale,  and  without  being  apparently  in  hopeless  competition 
with  the  mass  of  the  house.  It  is  generally  true  that  there  will  be 
certain  kinds  of  things  which  we  can  use  as  dominant  objects  or  as  some- 
thing to  attract  attention,  if  our  scheme  is  of  a  certain  size ;  but  if  our 
scheme  is  of  considerably  different  size,  then  the  range  of  objects  we 
must  choose  for  the  same  purpose  will  be  different.  We  shall  find  our- 
selves dealing  in  one  case  with  sundials,  gazing  globes,  tables,  seats ; 
in  another  case  with  arched  openings,  hooded  seats,  small  flights  of 
steps ;  and  in  a  larger  scale  with  shelters,  gazebos,  pergolas,  garden 
temples,  and  such  structures  of  relatively  greater  importance. 


THE    ESTATE 263 

There  will  be  also  on  any  estate  certain  structures  which  serve  House 
an  economic  and  not  primarily  an  esthetic  purpose,  —  for  instance,  ^^'^'"^' 
the  various  house  service  arrangements,  the  laundry  yard,  and  the 
service  court.  For  convenience  they  must  be  near  the  service  portion 
of  the  house.  Since  their  economic  purpose  is  not  one  to  which  atten- 
tion should  be  much  directed,  any  considerable  decoration  of  them 
would  be  decoration  misapplied.  They  should,  therefore,  be  at  least 
subordinated  and  probably  screened.  This  screen  frequently  takes 
the  form  of  a  fence  or  wall  or  formal  hedge,  and  then  these  areas  may, 
in  a  sense,  form  an  outlying  part  of  the  formal  scheme  of  the  house,  — 
outdoor  adjuncts  to  its  service  portion.  The  areas  themselves  should 
not  be  visible  from  the  living  rooms.  Their  screens  should  not  inter- 
rupt views  from  such  rooms,  though  they  may  be  visible,  and  may  often 
form  part  of  the  enframement  of  some  views  from  the  important  rooms 
of  the  house.  Under  these  circumstances  the  screens  are  more  usually 
formed  of  shrubbery  and  trees,  or  masked  by  planting  which  relates 
in  its  form  to  the  view  rather  than  to  the  service  area,  so  that  the  serv- 
ice area  is  not  only  concealed  but  no  attention  is  drawn  to  its  existence. 

In  larger  estates  the  various  necessary  service  buildings  and  areas  Estate  Service 
commonly  form  one  or  more  groups  separate  from  the  house  and  its  I^ji^ldings  and 
surroundings.  Often  the  garage  and  sometimes  the  stables  open  on 
the  house  service  court,  and  consequently  form  a  part  of  the  house 
group.  In  this  case  the  architectural  style  of  the  house  will  be  echoed, 
if  not  exactly  carried  out,  in  the  garage  and  other  structures.  In  the 
large  country  estate,  these  service  buildings  may  be  at  some  distance 
from  the  house,  and  so  need  not  be  looked  at  near  at  hand  unless  one 
is  interested  to  do  so,  but  their  main  mass,  at  least  the  silhouette  of 
their  roofs,  will  probably  still  tell  as  a  part  of  the  composition,  includ- 
ing the  house,  and  it  must  be  designed  to  tell  harmoniously. 

When  the  entrance  to  a  large  estate  is  far  from  the  main  residence, 
there  may  be  a  gate-lodge,  partly  to  supervise  the  traffic  which  uses 
the  road,  but  more  to  make  it  evident  from  the  street  that  the  entrance 
leads  to  a  private  place  of  some  importance.  The  lodge  and  the 
entrance  gate  may  be  all  part  of  one  structure,  similar  in  architectural 
style  to  the  house.  More  commonly,  in  this  country,  the  lodge  is  a 
separate  building,  near  the  gate,  used  as  a  dwelling  for  the  gardener  or 


264 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

other  employe,  and  designed  for  this  use  rather  than  as  a  piece  of  ar- 
chitectural decoration  of  the  entrance. 

When  the  country  estate  is  run  to  some  extent  as  a  farm,  the  nec- 
essary buildings  will  be  grouped  together,  probably  well  away  from  the 
house,  and  in  relation  to  the  farm  land,  for  practical  reasons.  Still, 
these  buildings  are  after  all  usually  not  primarily  business  ventures, 
but  serve  in  a  way  an  esthetic  end,  that  is,  they  serve  to  add  to  the 
completeness  of  the  scheme  in  the  owner's  mind.  On  account  of  this 
the  form  of  these  buildings  may  be  largely  modified  for  esthetic  effect. 
And  since  they  are  properly  not  so  dominant  as  the  house,  their  form 
may  to  a  greater  degree  be  fixed  by  and  subordinated  to  the  landscape, 
though  their  style  would  still  normally  be  congruous  with  that  of  the 
house.  Many  picturesque  and  interesting  arrangements  are  possible. 
The  precedents  of  many  of  these  are  English,  but  recently  a  considerable 
number  of  elaborate  and  decorative  farm  building  groups,  which  are 
valuable  data  for  the  designer,  have  been  constructed  in  this  country, 
suited  more  directly  to  our  local  conditions.* 

The  most  common  arrangement  of  the  buildings  is  in  a  group  sur- 
rounding a  court  or  a  series  of  courts ;  the  largest  and  most  dominant 
mass  of  building  often  being  that  of  the  hay-barn,  with  the  structures 
that  house  the  water-tank,  and  perhaps  the  silo,  serving  as  towers  to 
strengthen  the  corners  of  the  composition. 
The  Greenhouse  The  greenhouse  serves  two  distinct  purposes.  It  is  used  to  start 
plants  for  subsequent  use  in  the  garden,  and  to  raise  plants  for  display, 
either  in  the  greenhouse  or  in  the  house.  It  is,  therefore,  in  both 
uses,  a  sort  of  artificially  tropical  part  of  the  grounds.  Architectur- 
ally, it  is  a  particularly  difficult  object  to  treat.  To  best  perform 
its  own  functions  it  should  be  composed  as  nearly  as  possible  all  of 
glass.  If  so  made,  it  is  not  solid  enough,  not  architectural  enough, 
not  sufiiciently  like  any  other  units  in  the  scheme,  to  compose  well 
with  these  other  structures.  Sometimes  there  is  little  that  can  be  done 
but  to  minimize  and  endure  this  incongruity.  Often  however  the 
potting  shed,  which  is  not  a  glass  structure,  may  be  made  to  bear  its 
part  in  the  architectural  composition,  while  the  greenhouse,  entered 
through  it  and  thus  related  to  the  decorative  part  of  the  scheme,  is  con- 
*  See  Modern  Farm  Buildings,  by  Alfred  Hopkins.     (See  References.) 


THE    ESTATE 265 

cealed  behind  it  and  so  kept  from  appearing  incongruous  in  the  general 
design.  The  greenhouse  should  be  accessible  from  a  ser\'ice  drive 
and  from  the  gardens.  The  potting  shed,  or  the  main  entrance  to  the 
greenhouse,  may  well  be  accessible  from  the  house  through  some 
decorative  part  of  the  grounds,  without  forcing  the  pleasure  traffic  to 
cross  any  service  area  or  ser^'ice  drive. 

The  outdoor  service  arrangements  pertaining  to  the  upkeep  of  the  Reserve  and 
grounds  usually  comprise  the  reserv^e  garden  and  gardener's  yard,  the  ^"^'^"^ 
hotbeds  and  cold  frames,  and  compost  yard.  These  things,  not  being 
primarily  decorative,  are  often  put  into  the  least  conspicuous  place 
available,  consistent  with  their  use.  The  reserve  garden  and  the  vege- 
table garden,  however,  may  be  used  as  decorative  features  in  the  design 
almost  as  the  main  flower  garden  might  be  used.  There  are  a  good  many 
vegetables  which  are  in  themselves  decorative.  For  instance,  chives 
make  an  excellent  border  along  a  path,  and  an  interesting  tropical  effect 
can  be  produced  with  rhubarb.  An  arrangement  which  is  often  de- 
sirable is  to  continue,  from  the  flower  garden  through  the  vegetable^and 
reser\-e  gardens,  a  path  or  a  series  of  paths,  possibly  treated  with  rose 
arches,  at  any  rate  bordered  with  flowers  which  are  used  for  decoration 
in  the  house  afterwards,  or  which  perhaps  are  moved  into  the  main 
flower  garden  to  replace  some  other  plants  which  have  gone  out  of 
bloom.  These  flower  borders  may  be  backed  with  hedges  which 
segregate  the  walk  from  the  less  attractive  parts  of  the  vegetable  gar- 
den, into  which  you  can  go  through  gates  or  arches  or  gaps  in  the 
hedges  at  certain  places.  Or  the  paths  need  not  be  so  segregated  at  all ; 
the  vegetable  garden  may  simply  be  cut  up  Into  pleasant  and  useful 
areas  by  these  paths.  The  paths  themselves  may  be  decorative,  as 
we  have  said,  and  the  vegetable  garden,  if  it  be  well  kept  up  so  that 
there  is  a  neat  arrangement  of  growing  plants  in  well-kept  ground, 
will  be  to  a  considerable  extent  a  beautiful  thing  in  itself  without  any 
further  decoration. 

The  reser\-e  garden  should  be  close  to  the  flower  garden  and  should 
be  closely  related  to  the  greenhouse  and  the  compost  yard.  The  hot- 
beds and  cold  frames  would  commonly  be  in  the  reserve  garden.  Of 
course,  all  the  outdoor  accessories  tributan,-  to  the  garden  might  be 
in  one  area,  called  a  reserve  garden,  but  it  is  commonly  better  to  have 


266 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Tennis  Courts 
and  Areas  for 
Other  Recrea- 
tions 


a  separate  gardener's  yard  containing  the  compost  yard  and  space 
for  the  various  activities  intermediate  between  the  greenhouse,  hot- 
beds, cold  frames,  and  the  garden. 

Besides  all  these  service  areas,  there  are  some  areas  for  recreation, 
which  on  account  of  the  definite  shape  and  character  necessary  for  their 
use  are  not  always  easy  co  handle  as  objects  in  an  esthetic  design.* 
The  tennis  court  is  the  most  common  and  the  most  difficult  of  these. 
A  turf  court  with  its  necessary  backstops  may  form  a  bay  in  a  lawn, 
with  the  planting  on  each  side  concealing  the  backstops ;  or  with  its 
tennis  shelter  it  may  form  the  end  of  a  formal  vista,  or  with  archi- 
tectural treatment  of  the  backstops  it  may  of  itself  make  a  unit  in  a 
formal  design.  A  dirt  court  is  still  more  difficult  to  use  as  a  unit  in  an 
esthetic  design  where  the  surface  of  the  ground  is  elsewhere  turf  or 
flowers,  and  it  is  commonly  better  to  segregate  such  a  court  entirely  from 
the  rest  of  the  scheme. 

Croquet  lawns  and  bowling  greens,  if  not  used  by  very  expert 
players,  can  form  merely  a  part  of  an  open  lawn.  Where  a  rectilinear 
boundary  is  necessary  for  the  play,  they  may  form  a  part  of  some  ter- 
race scheme,  and  indeed,  the  term  "bowling  green"  is  often  applied 
to  a  reasonably  level,  formal,  inclosed  grass  area  on  which,  perhaps, 
bowls  were  never  intended  to  be  played. 

Outdoor  swimming  pools  may  assume  any  form  from  formal  and 
architectural  treatment  of  water  with  surrounding  walls,  fountains, 
terraces,  to  the  naturalistic  treatment  of  the  enlargement  of  a  brook  to 
make  a  sufficient  sheet  of  water  to  swim  in. 

Garden  theaters,!  which  were  used  in  a  good  many  instances  by  the 
Italians  of  the  Renaissance,  are  being  constructed  occasionally  in  this 
time  and  country.  They  may  be  worked  into  a  design  partly  at  least 
in  order  to  give  a  special  character  to  an  area  which  otherwise  might  be 
difficult  to  make  of  enough  importance,  but  in  a  community  with  much 
means  or  much  "local  talent,"  such  a  theater  might  be  very  frequently 
used,  for  plays,  or  music,  or  addresses.  These  theaters  usually  have  a 
stage,  raised  by  a  retaining  wall  some  three  feet  above  the  area  in  which 

*  See  footnote  on  p.  274. 

t  See  Italian  Garden  Theaters,  by  Henry  V.  Hubbard,  in  Landscape  Architecture, 
Jan.  1914,  V.  4,  p.  53-65,  with  illustrations,  and  subsequent  articles  on  the  same  sub- 
ject in  other  periodicals  by  several  other  writers. 


THE    ESTATE 267 

some  of  the  audience  sit,  and  enframed  and  backed  by  a  series  of  hedges 
or  similar  plantings  which  serve  as  a  proscenium  arch  and  as  stage 
scenery  concealing  the  spaces  on  each  side  in  which  the  players  wait 
for  their  cues,  and  having  openings  between  them  through  which  the 
characters  come  upon  the  stage.  The  place  for  the  audience  may  sim- 
ply be  an  inclosed  flat  area  on  which  chairs  are  set  when  the  perform- 
ance is  given,  or  it  may  consist  of  one  or  more  low  terraces  designed 
either  to  be  used  as  seats  or  in  a  similar  way  to  receive  temporary 
seats  when  the  theater  is  used.      (See  Tailpiece  on  p.  61.) 

Larger  areas  for  sports  and  games  are  sometimes  found  on 
country  estates ;  polo  fields,  racetracks,  and  so  on  ;  but  they  have 
no  particular  relation  to  the  typical  design  of  the  estate,  and  are  really 
separate  units  in  themselves.  It  is  hardly  desirable  to  discuss  them 
in  detail  here. 

As  we  said  when  we  began  the  discussion  of  the  private  estate,  one  The  Open 
of  the  desires  of  the  owner  will  almost  certainly  be  for  openness,  for  ex-  Lawn 
panse,  for  a  sense  of  freedom.  It  is  well  in  most  designs,  therefore,  to 
arrange  to  devote  at  least  one  large  simple  unit  to  this  purpose.  Some- 
times this  sense  of  expanse  may  be  obtained  by  a  view  over  several  small 
units,  perhaps  a  view  the  beauty  of  which  consists  in  a  distant  skyline, 
or  mountain,  or  river,  not  owned  nor  in  any  way  controlled  by  the 
owner  of  the  estate.  But  where  no  such  distant  view  is  possible,  it 
will  still  be  desirable  to  have  some  one  open  area  as  large  as  the  cir- 
cumstances allow ;  something  to  produce  the  effect  of  space.  Usually 
this  area  is  simply  treated  ;  its  boundaries  are  trees  and  shrubs,  its  floor 
is  turf,  and  on  smaller  places  it  usually  goes  by  the  name  of  the  "lawn." 
Since  the  designer  endeavors  to  make  use  of  all  the  space  at  his  com- 
mand the  lawn  is  often  informal  in  order  to  throw  into  this  one  open 
space  all  the  possible  accessible  area.  Since  its  fundamental  purpose 
is  to  suggest  openness  and  freedom,  a  naturalistic  treatment,  at  least 
an  informal  treatment,  is  likely  to  be  chosen,  and  this  is  particularly 
the  fact  since  in  many  cases  the  lawn  is  treated  as  an  extension  towards 
the  observer  of  a  distant  outside  view  *  which  in  the  nature  of  things 
in  the  country  is  naturalistic. 

*  Cf .  Repton's  "Appropriation,"  —  making  the  estate  seem  larger  than  it  is 
by  merging  its  boundaries  in  those  of  the  surrounding  country  and  repeating  within 


268 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Tree-shaded 
Areas 


Natural 

Character 

Units 


The  grass  surface  is  usually  best  when  concave,  so  that  it  rises  to- 
wards its  enframing  walls,  and  thus  gives  some  sequential  sweep  from 
floor  to  wall.*  This  same  form  has  a  further  advantage  of  giving  a 
base  on  which  the  surrounding  planting  can  stand  much  more  effec- 
tively than  would  be  the  case  if  the  ground  sloped  down  towards  the 
enframing  plantation. 

Even  when  this  lawn  is  small,  the  study  of  its  enframement  in 
smaller  detail, — breaking  it  into  points  and  bays,  making  the  points 
strong,  heavy,  dark,  making  the  bays  lighter  in  texture,  and  perhaps 
decorated  with  flowers,  —  will  add  needed  interest  without  destroying 
the  first  essential,  the  single  unity  of  the  whole  lawn. 

In  direct  contrast  to  the  open  expanse  of  sunny  lawn,  some  area  of 
close-grown  trees  to  furnish  shade  is  almost  an  essential.  It  may  be  a 
formal  planting  of  trees  related  closely  to  the  house,  perhaps  terminating 
one  end  of  an  overlook  terrace  and  containing  a  shelter,  it  may  be  a 
mass  of  trees  related  to  a  formal  composition  like  the  Italian  bosco,  or 
the  French  bosquet,  or  more  often  it  may  be  a  naturalistic  grove  crown- 
ing a  little  hilltop  or  embowering  a  valley,  and  owing  its  individuality 
and  particular  effect  to  an  intentional  development  of  the  natural 
character  of  its  site.  Then,  too,  such  an  area  will  have  a  character  of 
its  own  through  the  character  of  its  trees  :  it  may  be  a  pine  grove  or  an 
oak  grove,  each  of  which  gives  a  distinctive  effect  in  sight,  in  sound, 
and,  in  the  case  of  the  pine  grove  at  least,  in  smell. 

On  the  smaller  estate,  the  shapes  and  sizes  of  the  separate  units 
of  the  design  may  be  all  determined  by  the  designer  almost  entirely  from 
the  point  of  view  of  the  economical  apportionment  of  the  whole  area 
and  the  fitness  of  each  subordinate  part  to  its  purpose;  but  if  a  larger 
estate  is  fortunate  enough  to  contain  a  number  of  natural  landscape 
units,  the  designer  will  usually  do  his  best  to  adapt  these  to  his  nec- 
essary uses  without  spoiling  their  natural  character,  to  enhance  and 
protect  these  characters,!  and  present  their  effects  at  their  full  worth. 
For  the  freedom  which  these  natural  forms  suggest  is  usually  one  of 

the  estate  planting  found  in  the  adjoining  scenery.     See  his  Theory  and  Practice, 
Chapter  IX. 

*  Cf.  Chapter  IX,  p.  183. 

t  See  Chapter  V. 


THE    ESTATE 269 

the  things  which  a  man  is  primarily  seeking  when  he  goes  into  the 
country  to  build  himself  a  home.* 

The  first  requirement  of  a  road  f  is  that  it  shall  be  convenient  for  Access 
traffic.  Its  surface  must  be  suitable,  its  width  sufficient,  its  radius 
of  curvature  of  turns  ample  for  the  use  of  the  vehicles  which  pass  over 
it ;  but  a  road  is  not  of  itself  particularly  a  thing  of  beauty.  More-  Approach 
over  if  its  surface  is  fitted  to  modern  traffic  requirements,  it  is  too  rigid  ^o"^^^ 
and  definite,  too  self-assertive  to  be  wholly  congruous  with  the  natural- 
istic style  or  natural  character  which  is  the  expression  of  most  of  the 
larger  estates  in  this  country;  further,  it  is  expensive  to  build  and  to 
maintain.  The  problem  of  the  landscape  architect  in  providing  ac- 
cess by  road  in  an  estate  is  commonly  to  make  the  road  as  direct  and  as 
useful  as  possible,  but  at  the  same  time  to  make  it  as  little  conspicuous 
as  may  be,  and  as  little  an  interruption  of  the  landscape  through  which 
it  runs.  Since  the  road  needs  both  shade  and  concealment,  it  usually 
has  trees  along  its  course.  In  a  good  non-formal  scheme  these  trees,  as 
we  have  seen,  are  usually  so  grouped  that  the  side  of  the  foliage  masses 
away  from  the  road  relates  in  shape  not  to  the  road,  but  to  the  ad- 
jacent informal  open  areas  of  the  estate.  As  these  open  areas  enframed 
by  the  foliage  masses  are  commonly  related  to  those  facades  of  the 
house  from  which  the  important  views  are  seen,  it  comes  about  that 
unless  there  is  some  reason  to  the  contrary  the  roads  usually  approach 
the  house,  concealed  by  the  foliage,  in  a  diagonal  direction  towards  a 
corner. 

In  a  large  estate  the  approach  road  should  seem  to  lead  with  rea- 
sonable directness  from  the  public  street  to  the  house,  or  if  it  be  in- 
direct, there  should  seem  to  be  a  sufficient  reason  for  this.  It  is  seldom 
desirable  to  make  a  road  very  circuitous  for  the  sake  of  making  the 
estate  seem  larger,  and  although  at  times  it  may  be  well  to  divert  a  road 
considerably  from  its  more  direct  course  in  order  to  afford  to  any  one 
passing  over  it  a  particularly  good  view,  still  this  may  be  easily  over- 
done, because  on  a  private  estate  the  view  is  better  enjoyed  by  people 
afoot  who  have  more  leisure  to  contemplate  it.  In  short,  the  ap- 
proach road  should  afford  as  many  pleasing  outlooks  as  possible  and 

*  Cf.  the  section  in  Chapter  IV,  The  Modern  American  Landscape  Style, 
t  Cf.  Chapter  X,  p.  218. 


270 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


should  be  pleasantly  and  completely  fitted  to  the  topography,  and 
should  give  a  flattering  impression  of  the  estate  and  of  the  house  at 
first  glance ;  but  usually  for  none  of  these  considerations  should  a 
very  much  greater  length  of  road  be  built,  because  the  road  is  not 
itself  a  desirable  object  in  the  landscape,  and  adding  to  its  length  may 
well  spoil  more  beauty  than  it  creates. 

As  we  have  said,  where  it  can  be  avoided,  a  road  should  not  intrude 
upon  the  open  naturalistic  views  from  the  house.  Where  the  road 
must  cross  such  a  view,  it  is  better  to  have  it  cross  approximately  at 
right  angles  to  the  axis  of  the  view  so  that  it  shall  offer  the  minimum 
surface  to  the  sight,  and  very  often  the  road  may  be  entirely  concealed 
in  an  undulation  of  the  surface  of  the  ground.  It  is  usually  better  to 
have  the  approach  road  rise  as  it  nears  the  house,  that  the  house  may 
have  sufficient  dominance  in  the  composition.  If  the  house  lies  upon 
a  side  hill,  it  may  be  both  necessary  and  esthetically  effective  to  have 
the  road  approach  it  from  above,  but  in  this  case  it  can  be  made  evi- 
dent that  there  is  still  lower  land  beyond  the  house.  The  front  turn 
itself,  however,  should  pitch  away  from  the  house  both  for  ease  of 
drainage  and  for  appearance'  sake.  If  the  road  approaches  the  house 
from  below  or  approximately  on  a  level,  it  is  likely  to  be  unpleasant  to 
have  the  portion  of  the  road  nearest  the  house  pitch  down  into  the 
front  turn.  The  first  view  of  the  house  will  be  ineffective  if  it  is  dwarfed 
by  an  intervening  rise  in  the  road,  and  in  any  case  it  is  likely  to  be 
annoying  to  be  required  to  go  up  a  hill  for  no  purpose  except  at  once 
to  descend  to  the  objective  point. 

It  is  always  theoretically  desirable  not  to  allow  service  traffic  to 
use  the  road  that  approaches  the  living  portion  of  the  house,  but  in 
many  cases  this  would  entail  so  great  an  additional  road  construction  as 
to  be  practically  inadvisable.  (Compare  Drawings  XXX  and  XXXII.) 
If  both  kinds  of  traffic  use  the  same  road  for  a  part  of  the  way  from  the 
public  highway  to  the  house,  the  continuity  of  direction  should  fol- 
low the  main  road  when  the  service  road  branches  off  from  it,  and 
the  service  road  should  commonly  be  narrower  than  the  main  approach, 
so  that  there  can  be  no  possible  question  which  is  the  more  important. 
This  separation  of  the  two  roads  should  if  possible  take  place  before  the 
service  traffic  becomes  visible  from  the  living  portion  of  the  house ;   at 


THE     ESTATE  27^ 

worst,  the  service  traffic  might  use  the  farther  side  of  the  front  turn, 
thence  going  on  to  its  own  service  turn  in  relation  to  the  service  en- 
trance. Where  the  garage  opens  upon  the  service  turn,  it  will  be 
necessary  to  have  some  reasonably  direct  automobile  traffic  connection 
between  the  service  turn  and  the  front  turn,  but  this  should  if  possible 
be  managed  without  opening  the  view  from  one  to  the  other.  Where 
the  front  turn  and  the  service  turn  are  inclosed  in  courts  in  a  more 
formal  scheme  in  English  fashion,  a  gateway  giving  direct  access  from 
one  to  the  other  is  common,  and  need  not  be  bad  if  it  be  arranged  so 
that  the  view  through  it  from  the  forecourt  falls  on  some  pleasantly 
designed  portion  of  the  farther  side  of  the  service  court. 

On  the  smaller  estate,  or  in  any  case  where  the  house  lies  near  the 
public  highway,  the  approach  road  may  be  more  difficult  to  handle  in 
relation  to  the  main  views  from  the  house.  It  may  enter  near  one  side 
of  the  property  and  run  diagonally  towards  one  corner  of  the  house  or 
by  one  end  of  it  to  an  entrance  turn  at  the  side  or  possibly  at  the  rear ; 
or  it  may  enter  near  one  front  corner,  sweep  close  against  the  front  of 
the  house  and  go  out  again  at  the  other  front  corner  of  the  property, 
being  to  some  extent  concealed  from  the  front  windows  by  lying  so  close 
beneath  them,  and  probably  being  treated,  as  far  as  may  be,  as  a  decora- 
tive border  of  a  symmetrical  open  plot  lying  axially  in  front  of  the  house. 
(See  Drawing  XXXVII,  after  p.  356.)  Or,  — and  this  is  an  especially  de- 
sirable arrangement  where  the  house  lies  close  to  the  public  street,  but  the 
view  from  the  house  into  or  beyond  the  street  is  not  to  be  preserved,  — 
the  main  carriage  entrance  may  be  directly  from  the  street  into  a  fore- 
court, a  separate  service  entrance  connecting  the  service  wing  with  the 
street  and  leaving  uninterrupted  all  other  views  from  the  house. 

On  the  private  estate,  in  informal  and  naturalistic  designs,  paths  *  Paths 
are  to  some  extent  open  to  the  same  objections  which  apply  to  roads, 
but  to  a  much  less  degree,  because  the  path  can  be  kept  better  in  scale 
with  its  surroundings,  it  can  be  more  readily  concealed  and  subordinated 
to  the  topography,  and  its  surface  can  be  made  not  particularly  con- 
spicuous or  incongruous  with  the  other  elements  in  the  scheme.  In 
formal  designs,  the  paths  are  of  course  a  common  and  valuable  part  in 
the  composition. 

•Cf.  Chapter  X,  p.  218. 


272  LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

In  a  large  estate  where  the  house  is  set  at  a  considerable  distance 
from  the  highway,  it  often  happens  that  no  special  provision  for  foot 
traffic  is  made,  since  the  road  serves  this  purpose  well  enough,  and  the 
wheel  traffic  is  not  so  frequent  as  to  be  dangerous  for  pedestrians.  If 
there  is  a  separate  footpath  for  access  to  the  house,  purely  for  the  pur- 
pose of  segregating  the  two  lines  of  traffic,  it  may  exceptionally  be 
desirable  to  run  it  parallel  to  the  road,  but  usually  the  approach  path 
may  run  a  more  direct  course  than  the  approach  road  (see  again  Draw- 
ing XXXVII),  either  crossing  inconspicuously  an  open  area  which  the 
road  must  avoid  for  appearance'  sake,  or  surmounting  by  a  steep 
gradient  or  a  flight  of  steps  a  slope  too  abrupt  for  the  road.  As  with 
the  road,  it  is  seldom  pleasing  to  make  the  approach  path  go  notice- 
ably out  of  its  course  for  the  sake  of  oifering  any  beauties  by  the 
way.  If  a  path  is  needed  to  an  especially  good  point  of  view,  it 
would  be  better  to  make  a  separate  path  for  this  purpose  than  to 
impose  a  constant  burden  upon  foot  traffic,  some  of  it  hurried,  be- 
tween street  and  house.  Service  traffic  is  of  course  particularly  diffi- 
cult to  force  out  of  its  way  except  by  the  interposition  of  considerable 
obstacles.  It  is  important  to  know  what  will  be  the  natural  lines 
of  foot  traffic  among  the  various  service  buildings  and  between  these 
buildings  and  the  house,  and  particularly  between  the  street  and 
the  service  entrance  to  the  house,  the  line  which  will  be  used  by 
those  delivering  the  great  bulk  of  small  purchases  of  all  kinds.  Es- 
pecially when  the  house  is  near  the  street  it  is  necessary  to  provide 
direct  service  access  from  the  street  by  a  footpath,  since  almost  all 
deliveries  will  be  made  in  this  way,  and  any  cross-cutting,  by  traffic 
of  this  kind,  of  areas  intended  for  private  enjoyment  is  likely  to  be 
particularly  annoying. 
Design  of  the  As  we  have  said,  in  the  beginning  of  the  Chapter,  the  arrangement 

Whole  Estate  ^f  ^j^g  various  elements  of  the  estate,  in  their  best  relations  esthetic  and 
economic,  in  any  given  design,  should  be  the  physical  realization  of  the 
desires  of  the  owner,  modified  by  the  limitations  of  the  site.  It  is 
evident  that  this  realization  will  be  and  ought  to  be  different  in  each 
individual  case.  The  best  design  will  be  that  which  makes  all  its  ele- 
ments subserve  its  purposes  with  the  least  possible  amount  of  incon- 
gruous or  wasted  result.     Such  a  design  is  possible  only  where  the  ideal 


THE    ESTATE  273 

to  be  served  and  the  limitations  of  the  site  and  materials  have  been 
clearly  kept  in  mind  throughout. 

This  decision  as  to  the  possible  adaptation  between  circumstances  Choice  of  Site 
and  ideals  is  the  decision  which  must  first  be  made  in  those  cases  where  ■f°''  '^^  £^(^te 
various  alternative  sites  are  being  considered  for  an  estate.  Here  the 
landscape  architect  may  be  of  great  service  to  his  client  by  helping  the 
client  to  determine,  more  definitely  than  he  could  do  alone,  what 
actually  are  his  essential  requirements  which  must  be  permanently 
satisfied  by  any  place  which  he  chooses,  and  what  are  the  ways  in  which 
these  essential  requirements  may  be  met.  There  are  certain  economic 
requirements  which  must  be  met  by  any  piece  of  land  chosen,  —  health- 
fulness,  water  supply,  a  certain  minimum  of  room  and  accessibility, 
and  so  on ;  and  then  there  are  others  which  may  vary  according  to  the 
client's  desires.  For  instance,  if  natural  freedom  and  some  suggestion  of 
wildness  are  ver}^  desirable  things  to  a  client,  he  might  choose  either  an 
open  hillside  pasture  or  a  piece  of  partly  open  low-lying  pine  forest  as 
his  countr\'  property ;  but  if  a  distant  view  seemed  also  very  desirable 
to  him,  the  second  piece  of  land  would  probably  be  eliminated  from 
consideration.  If  there  is  any  wide  range  of  choice  among  a  number 
of  alternatives,  it  usually  facilitates  a  decision  categorically  to  determine 
the  essential  requirements,  to  arrange  them  roughly  in  order  of  impor- 
tance, and  to  judge  the  various  pieces  of  ground  under  consideration 
according  to  the  completeness  with  which  they  meet  these  requirements. 
Once  having  chosen  a  piece  of  ground,  however,  it  is  well  If  possible  to 
be  motived  by  its  characteristics  and  to  seek  to  produce  only  those 
effects  which  can  be  produced  well  under  the  circumstances.  To  revert 
to  our  former  example,  It  would  probably  be  unwise  to  choose  the  open 
pasture  and  proceed  to  transform  It  Into  a  grove,  or  to  choose  the  grove 
and  try  to  transform  it  Into  a  meadow. 

The  question  of  expenditure  for  purchase,  construction,  and  upkeep 
will  lie  back  of  all  these  decisions.  Whether  the  client's  property 
shall  be  a  large  countr}-  estate,  a  suburban  estate,  or  a  house  lot  will 
usually  depend  primarily  upon  his  purse ;  but  this  choice  once  made, 
whether  unwillingly  or  not,  should  be  adhered  to  consistently  like  the 
choice  of  any  effect.  The  designer  should  keep  his  treatment  in 
scale  with  his  problem,  not  attempting  to  make  a  country  estate  out 


274 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Apportionment 
of  Estate  Area 
into  the  Units 
Required 


of  a  house  lot,  nor  to  give  to  a  man  in  moderate  circumstances 
a  scheme  requiring  great  annual  upkeep  expense.  A  simple  scheme 
well  constructed  and  well  kept  up  is  better  than  an  ambitious  scheme, 
ill  constructed  and  run  to  seed,  and  better  than  a  complicated  scheme 
crowded  into  too  small  an  area. 

The  apportioning  of  the  area  of  an  estate  into  separate  parts  for  its 
separate  uses,  esthetic  and  economic,  is  again  largely  a  matter  of  the 
client's  desires  and  the  topographic  possibilities.  But  it  should  be 
remembered  that  some  effects  may  be  produced  sufficiently  well  by  the 
skillful  use  of  a  small  space,  whereas  other  effects  are  absolutely  depend- 
ent on  extent.  A  flower  garden  may  be  very  small  and  still  quite  suffi- 
cient ;  a  lawQ  is  likely  to  be  better  the  broader  its  expanse.  Some 
areas  in  an  estate  have  certain  necessary  sizes  and  certain  typical  shapes, 
like  road  turns  and  tennis  courts.*  Others  have  formal  shapes  but  not 
definitely  determined  sizes,  as  for  instance,  a  formally  arranged  garden. 
In  a  good  design  these  necessarily  predetermined  areas  are  provided  in 
their  proper  relations  without  thereby  leaving  portions  of  the  property 
unusable  because  of  awkward  shape  or  inconvenient  location.  Fortu- 
nately there  are  some  elements  in  the  design  of  an  estate,  like  groves  of 
trees  or,  at  a  smaller  scale,  plantations  of  shrubs,  which  are  not  fixed  as 
to  size  and  <lo  not  need  to  have  any  definable  relation  between  one  side 
and  another.  They  naturally  come  to  serve  as  boundary  masses  at  the 
edge  of  the  estate  or  to  lie  between  other  units  of  the  design.  An  in- 
genious designer  should  usually  be  able  to  make  them  serve  this  pur- 
pose and  take  up  discrepancies  between  the  boundaries  of  one  unit  and 
another,  still  not  wasting  an  area  which  might  be  better  employed. 

*  For  diagrams  of  areas  for  certain  sports,  see  article  by  Henry  V.  Hubbard, 
Space  Required  for  Some  Common  Outdoor  Games,  in  Landscape  Architecture,  July 
1912,  V.  2,  p.  163-166. 


PART   III 

L.\ND   SUBDIVISION   FOR  RESIDENTIAL  PURPOSES 

Land  subdivision  as  a  business  venture  —  Items  of  expense  to  the  developer  — 
Salable  assets  produced  by  development  —  Room  —  Proximity  to  town  — 
Convenience  —  Social  desirability  —  Amenity  —  Beauty  —  "  Low-cost"  and 
"high-cost"  developments  —  Professional  advice  in  land  subdivision  — 
Procedure  in  design  —  Choice  of  type  of  development  in  relation  to 
development  of  city  —  The  street  system  :  its  relation  to  the  city  plan  — 
Alleys  —  Characteristic  effects  of  street  systems  —  Streets  in  relation  to  topog- 
raphy —  Sub-surface  utilities  —  Street  widths  —  Roadways  and  planting  strips 
—  Sidewalks  —  Lots  :  sizes  —  Width  and  depth  —  Shape  —  Orientation  —  Re- 
served areas  —  Restrictions  —  Districting. 

The  subdivision  and  development  of  land  for  residential  purposes  is  Land  Sub- 
different  from  most  of  the  problems  with  which  the  landscape  architect  ^^^^/on  as  a 
has  to  do,  because  the  final  success  of  the  design  is  usually  tested  by  the  p'enture 
pecuniary  value  of  the  finished  result.     In  private  estate  design,  in 
park  design,  many  things  are  done  which,  while  the  designer  knows  them 
to  be  worth  their  cost,  cannot  be  demonstrated  to  produce  a  definite 
profit  in  dollars  and  cents.     In  land  subdivision  work,  however,  except 
when  it  is  a  part  of  some  philanthropic  movement,  every  cent  spent  by 
the  owner  for  acquisition  and  development  must  show  a  fair  profit 
when  the  property  is  again  sold. 

Land  subdivision  for  residential  purposes  is  a  business  venture  which  Items  of 

consists  in  the  development  of  land  which  is  not  intensively  used,  —  Expense  to  the 

Developer 
perhaps    "waste   land,"    woodland,  or   farm,  —  providing    for   proper 

access,  lighting,  water  supply,  sewerage,  and  so  on,  or  at  least  some  of 

these  conveniences,  and  selling  what  remains  of  the  land,  after  that 

portion  turned  over  to  the  public  has  been  set  apart,  in  small  areas  at  a 

profit.     In  doing  this,  the  selling  price  of  the  land  must  in  one  way  or 

another  be  charged  with  the  cost  of  the  following  items  of  the  develop- 

275 


276 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Salable  Assets 
Produced  by 
Development 


Room 


ment  or  of  as  many  of  them  as  are  incurred  in  the  particular  case :  the 
value  of  the  unimproved  land,  street  and  sidewalk  construction,  tree 
and  other  planting,  sanitary  sewers,  storm  sewers,  telephone  and  elec- 
tric light  wires,  water  pipes,  gas  pipes,  street  lighting,  street  signs,  and 
such  other  structures  as  the  particular  situation  may  make  necessary. 
All  these  conveniences  may  not  be  provided  when  the  land  is  sold.  If 
any  which  are  necessary  are  not  provided,  the  selling  price  of  the  land 
will  be  by  so  much  reduced.  The  selling  price  of  the  land  must  also 
include  the  actual  cost  of  putting  it  upon  the  market,  covering  cost  of 
all  professional  services  concerned  with  this  process,  —  those  of  the 
real  estate  expert,  landscape  architect,  engineer,  and  soon,  —  the  interest 
on  the  various  expenditures  made  in  developing  the  land  from  the  time 
when  they  are  incurred  to  the  time  when  the  land  benefited  by  them  is 
sold,  and  taxes  on  unsold  land  up  to  the  time  when  the  last  piece  of  land 
is  disposed  of.  Obviously  there  will  be  less  land  to  be  sold  than  was  at 
first  bought,  since  a  considerable  portion  must  be  set  aside  and  ultimately 
given  to  the  city  in  the  form  of  streets  or  perhaps  other  public  areas, 
and  the  total  cost  of  the  land  so  set  apart  must  be  included  in  the  original 
cost  of  unimproved  land  to  be  covered  by  the  selling  price  of  the  land 
actually  sold.  Finally,  the  whole  transaction  should  show,  in  addition 
to  the  original  value  of  the  land  and  the  total  cost  of  developing  it  and 
marketing  it  which  we  have  just  discussed,  a  profit  to  the  owner  for 
his  risk  in  undertaking  the  development.  Usually  of  course  the  owner 
looks  also  for  a  speculative  profit,  repaying  him  perhaps  very  amply 
for  his  ability  to  put  into  the  real  estate  market  something  much  in 
demand. 

In  return  for  these  various  expenditures  the  persons  developing  the 
land  have  the  following  valuable  things  for  sale  in  diflferent  degrees 
according  to  the  case,  —  things  not  always  separable  in  the  actual  case, 
and  interdependent  in  various  ways,  but  for  the  sake  of  discussion, 
capable  of  being  talked  of  separately.  First,  there  is  for  sale  room,  — 
space  in  which  a  man  can  build  a  house,  construct  a  garden  or  make 
whatever  desirable  use  of  the  ground  he  pleases.  If  the  scale  of  living 
of  the  people  to  whom  the  land  is  intended  to  be  sold  requires  a  certain 
amount  of  space,  then  this  will  fix  the  size  of  the  separate  lots.  Granted 
however  that  space  enough  is  given  in  this  way,  the  smaller  the  lots 


LAND    SUBDIVISION  ^77 

are,  the  more  per  square  foot  will  be  received  for  the  land  sold  as  lots. 
Second,  there  will  be  for  sale  proximity  to  town.     Other  things  being  Proximity  to 
equal  it  is  an  advantage  to  everyone  to  be  able  to  get  rapidly  from  his 
dwelling  to  the  business  or  down-town  districts  of  the  city.     Plainly 
the  smaller  the  lots  are  and  consequently  the  more  of  them  there  are, 
the  more  people  are  provided  with  proximity  to  town,  and  thus,  so  far 
as  this  factor  goes,  the  higher  can  be  the  total  selling  price  of  the  land. 
Third,  there  is  for  sale  convenience,  that  is,  ease  of  access  to  the  lots  Convenience 
by  the  local  roads,  convenience  of  shape  of  lot,  convenient  relation  of 
the  slope  of  the  surface  of  the  lot,  if  there  be  any,  to  its  probable  use. 
In  attaining  this  convenience  probably  some  extra  expense  in  road  con- 
struction will  be  incurred,  and  perhaps  fewer  lots  will  be  produced 
than  might  otherwise  be  obtained.     Fourth,  there  is  for  sale  social  Social 
desirability,  perhaps  the  most  important  and  least  predictable  of  all  the  ^"^''    *  ''>' 
characteristics  that  make  land  salable.     The  desirability  of  the  ad- 
joining land  will  usually  be  a  principal  factor,  but  the  size  of  the  lots 
and   the   restrictions   will   have   considerable   influence.     The   kind   of 
selling  campaign  and  the  social  status  of  the  first  few  people  who  buy 
lots  will  also  tend  to  determine  the  social    desirability  of   the  whole 
property.     Fifth,  there  is  amenity,  that  is  mutual  unobnoxiousness,  the  Amenity 
avoidance  of  anything  in  the  construction,  development,  or  use  of  the 
buildings   and  grounds  of  one  property  detrimental  to  its   neighbor. 
Large  lots  will  evidently  make  this  more  easy,  but  restrictions  as  to 
size,  appearance,  and  cost  of  buildings  and  their  location  and  use  will 
do  much  towards  amenity  even  with  small  lots.     And  then  there  will 
be  for  sale  beauty.     The  decision  as  to  what  kind  of  beauty  is  to  be  Beauty 
produced  will  be  one  of  the  fundamental  decisions  to  be  made  before 
the  scheme  can  be  at  all  decided  on.     If  there  exists  considerable  natural 
beauty  of  pleasant  hillside  and  great  trees,  and  if  the  lots  may  be  made 
large  enough  so  that  the  natural  surface  of  the  ground  may  be  to  a  great 
extent  preserved,  then  there  may  be  chosen  a  development  of  winding 
roads,  of  informal  planting,  of  lots  so  arranged  that  the  lot  units  and 
the  landscape  units  coincide  as  far  as  may  be  possible,  and  the  house 
locations  may  be  so  taken  as  to  do  the  minimum  of  damage  to  the  natural 
landscape.     If  this  kind  of  beauty  does  not  naturally  exist,  it  may 
nevertheless  be  chosen  as  a  type  to  be  approximated  in  the  new  develop- 


278 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

ment,  if  the  lots  are  large  enough  to  admit  of  it.  If,  however,  the  lots 
are  small,  the  houses  necessarily  close  together  and  dominant  in  the 
scheme  and  close  to  the  street  so  that  no  broad  naturalistic  effect  is 
possible,  then  the  beauty  to  be  sought  must  be  of  quite  another  kind,  — 
a  beauty  of  harmonious  but  diversified  houses,  of  tree-shaded  streets, 
with  pleasant  curves  or  with  pleasantly  broken  straights,  a  beauty  consist- 
ing largely  in  a  general  air  of  decency  and  well  being.  This  must  be  pro- 
vided for  in  the  design,  but  can  be  maintained  only  by  properly  enforced 
restrictions  and  particularly  by  a  proper  community  self-respect  among 
the  lot  owners. 

If  a  land  subdivision  scheme  be  large,  so  that  it  creates  its  own 
atmosphere,  so  to  speak,  and  is  judged  by  its  own  appearance  and  its 
own  worth,  there  can  be  little  doubt  in  any  one's  mind  that  all  these 
considerations,  including  that  of  beauty,  will  have  their  recognizable 
effect  upon  the  selling  price  of  the  land.  In  smaller  schemes  this  is 
not  always  at  once  so  obvious,  since  an  ill-arranged  or  ugly  scheme  in  a 
good  neighborhood  may  still  be  salable ;  but  it  is  really  capitalizing  the 
good  arrangement  and  the  beauty  of  its  neighbors,  and  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  community  at  large  its  additional  profits  are  more  than 
offset  by  the  damage  to  the  surrounding  property. 
"Low-cost"  It  is  evident  that  the  relative  importance  of  these  various  considera- 

'""^.5  "i^'^         tions  will  be  different  to  the  prospective  purchaser  according  to  his 
velopments  wealth  and  social  status  and  consequent  habits  of  life.     From  this, 

there  has  arisen  in  the  ordinary  parlance  of  real  estate  men  a  classifica- 
tion of  residential  developments  into  three  kinds  :  "  low-cost,"  "  medium- 
cost,"  and  "  high-cost."  No  sharp  line  can  be  drawn  between  these 
classes,  although  the  terms  low-cost  and  high-cost  each  stand  for  a 
sufficiently  definite  central  idea.  A  low-cost  development,  insisting  on 
those  characteristics  which  mean  low  purchase  price  and  low  annual  ex- 
penditure, must  reduce  the  facilities  which  it  provides  to  the  minimum 
consistent  with  permanent  health,  efficiency,  and  self-respect.  The 
low-cost  development  has  in  the  past  had  a  bad  name  because,  for  the 
sake  of  cheapness,  these  various  facilities  have  been  reduced  below  this 
minimum,  most  strikingly  perhaps  on  the  side  of  amenity  and  beauty. 
There  are  very  many  cases,  however,  where  by  working  out  a  large 
enough  scheme,  beauty  and  amenity  to  a  very  considerable  degree  may 


LAND    SUBDIVISION 279 

be  included  in  the  excellences  of  the  property  put  within  the  reach  of 
the  ordinary  working-man. 

The  low-cost  development  will  be  practicable  only  in  those  places 
where  the  bread-winners  can  get  easily  and  cheaply  to  their  work. 
Where  the  land  is  at  all  expensive,  the  low-cost  development  will  in 
general  be  characterized  by  the  attempt  to  house  as  many  people  as 
possible  per  square  foot  of  lot.  It  will  therefore  have  separate  dwellings, 
each  covering  the  maximum  proportion  of  its  lot,  or  semi-detached  or 
two-family  houses,  or  in  the  final  case  of  economy  of  room,  apartment 
houses  or  flats,  or  houses  in  block.  Poor  people  may  be  housed  on 
expensive  land,  as  in  our  in-town  tenement  houses  where  they  sacrifice 
everything  but  absolute  necessities  to  proximity  to  the  city.  This  same 
concentration  of  population  may  of  course  take  place  in  higher  cost 
developments  where  the  land  is  very  expensive,  as  in  the  in-town  apart- 
ment houses  or  dwellings-in-blocks  of  people  of  means.  The  type  of 
low-cost  development  in  which  the  landscape  architect  is  likely  to  be 
particularly  interested,  however,  is  that  in  which  the  land  is  sufficiently 
cheap  to  allow  of  ample  light  and  air  and  some  beauty  of  building  rela- 
tion and  planting.  With  the  decentralization  of  industry,  these  results 
may  be  obtained  without  requiring  of  the  bread-winning  members  of 
the  family  any  considerable  travel  between  home  and  work.* 

A  high-cost  development  is  one  in  which  the  purchasers  can  afford 
to  pay  not  only  for  absolute  essentials,  but  for  such  convenience,  amen- 
ity, and  beauty  as  the  land  can  offer  in  excess  of  these.  Such  a  develop- 
ment may  be  far  from  town,  since  its  owners  have  the  leisure  and  the 
money  for  the  longer  journey,  or  it  may  be  near  town,  in  which  case 
the  greater  cost  appears  not  as  a  transportation  charge  but  as  first  cost 
of  land.  In  either  case,  such  a  development  would  be  characterized  by 
larger  lots,  wider  spacing  of  houses,  giving  over  of  ample  land  for  con- 
venience and  beauty  of  streets,  and  perhaps  by  restrictions  which  compel 
the  expenditure  of  a  relatively  large  amount  of  money  upon  the  houses, 
and  so  to  a  considerable  extent  fix  the  social  status  of  the  purchasers. 
Where  the  land  is  very  expensive,  however,  the  high-cost  development 
may  be  obliged  to  make  the  same  sort  of  sacrifices  that  the  low-cost 

*  See  the  list  and  illustrations  of  low-cost  housing  developments  given  in  John 
Nolen's  More  Houses  for  Bridgeport,  1916. 


28o 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Professional 
Advice  in  Land 
Subdivision 


Procedure  in 
Design 


Choice  of  Type 
of  Development 
in  Relation  to 
Development  of 
City 


development  does,  until  it  comes  again  to  the  in-town  development  of 
apartment  houses  or  houses  in  block,  the  essential  difference  from  the 
low-cost  development  on  similar  land  lying  in  the  number  of  people 
housed  per  square  foot  of  ground  area.  High-cost  suburban  land 
development  *  plainly  offers  to  the  landscape  architect  as  an  artist 
greater  opportunities  than  does  the  low-cost  development,  since  more 
money  may  be  spent  on  amenity  and  beauty.  If  the  landscape  architect 
looks  upon  his  work  from  the  point  of  view  of  social  betterment,  how- 
ever, his  greater  opportunity  for  public  service  lies  in  the  low-cost 
development. 

The  landscape  architect  is  of  service  to  those  interested  in  the 
development  of  land  for  residential  purposes  primarily  through  his 
knowledge  of  the  various  kinds  of  outdoor  beauty  and  utility  and  of 
the  means  whereby  they  can  be  economically  produced ;  but  any  land- 
scape architect  should  learn  through  practice  enough  about  the  effect 
which  is  produced  on  land  values  by  different  types  of  development  to 
make  his  advice  and  cooperation  worth  seeking  also  in  questions  of 
adapting  means  to  ends  on  the  financial  side.  In  the  larger  land  sub- 
division schemes  in  this  country,  it  is  common  for  two  kinds  of- pro- 
fessional advisers  to  cooperate  on  the  general  design  :  —  the  real  estate 
man  who  knows  what  the  public  expects  in  residential  land,  what  the 
public  will  pay,  what  other  land  is  being  sold  in  competition,  and  how  a 
selling  campaign  may  be  managed ;  and  another  professional  adviser, 
often  a  landscape  architect,  who  has  the  technical  skill  and  the  expe- 
rience to  produce  from  the  land  the  maximum  of  salable  utility  and 
beauty  at  the  least  cost. 

It  is  evident  that  in  determining  on  the  design  all  the  general  con- 
siderations which  we  have  mentioned  must  be  taken  into  account,  and 
the  best  design  will  not  be  produced  until  the  most  effective  compromise 
has  been  reached  among  their  conflicting  claims. 

The  first  decision  should  be  to  determine,  as  far  as  is  possible  with 
the  data  at  hand,  what  part  the  land  is  to  play  in  its  relation  to  the 
future  city.  A  great  deal  of  harm  has  been  done  to  our  cities  by  un- 
regulated development  of  private  land  for  local  use  only,  to  the  detri- 
ment of  any  possible  convenient  general  scheme.  This  is  true  not  only 
*  For  instance,  see  Book  of  Pictures  of  Roland  Park,  Baltimore,  Md.,  191 1. 


LAND    SUBDIVISION 28^ 

of  traffic  relations  but  also  of  the  use  of  the  land  for  residential,  commer- 
cial, or  manufacturing  purposes.  The  intermingling  of  widely  different 
types  of  use  is  likely  to  be  inefficient  from  the  point  of  view  of  any  one 
type  or  from  the  point  of  view  of  all  together.  The  spread  of  manu- 
facturing or  commercial  activities  into  residential  districts,  or  the  spread 
of  a  lower  class  of  residential  development  into  an  area  occupied  by  a 
higher  class,  destroys  a  great  deal  of  present  value  and  is  likely  to  find 
the  ground  unsuited  by  its  design  to  its  new  use.  Moreover,  the  un- 
certainty as  to  what  use  may  be  made  of  a  piece  of  ground  puts  a  pre- 
mium on  those  uses  only  which  will  not  be  injured  by  any  subsequent 
development,  and  therefore  naturally  discourages  those  uses  in  which 
amenity  and  beauty  bear  a  considerable  part.  The  recognition  of  this 
great  difficulty  and  of  the  inability  of  private  capital  and  private  enter- 
prise to  cope  with  it  has  brought  about  our  modern  districting  laws,  of 
which  the  recent  ordinances  of  New  York  City  offer  the  most  complete 
example  in  the  United  States.*  Where  such  regulations  exist,  they  are 
first  to  be  consulted  by  the  land  developer ;  where  they  do  not,  he  must 
make  the  best  prophecy  he  can  himself  as  to  the  future  use  of  the  land 
and  proceed  accordingly.  The  developer  must  then  consider  what  is 
to  be  the  social  and  financial  status  of  his  future  purchasers,  roughly, 
that  is,  the  price  they  are  willing  to  pay  for  a  building  lot.  If  the  land 
subdivision  scheme  is  large,  it  may  be  different  in  different  parts  in  this 
regard,  but  in  any  one  small  neighborhood  widely  different  residential 
types  will  not  mix  and  the  cheaper  will  drive  out  the  more  expensive. 
Having  made  these  decisions,  and  taking  into  account  the  original  cost 
of  the  land  per  square  foot,  it  will  be  possible  for  the  land  developer  to 
determine  roughly  the  selling  price  per  square  foot  and  the  range  of 
lot  sizes  which  would  be  most  desirable  in  the  subdivision.  With  this 
in  mind  the  road  locations  are  to  be  studied  and  so  chosen  that  with  the 
least  amount  of  road  and  the  greatest  traffic  convenience,  the  land 
may  be  all  divided  into  lots  of  the  chosen  range  of  size.  Evidently  the 
size  of  a  lot  as  well  as  the  topographic  and  traffic  considerations  will 
motive  the  determination  of  the  distance  from  one  road  to  the  next. 
Within  certain  limits  the  shape  of  the  lot  may  be  varied  to  give  the 

*  See  the  Final  (Comprehensive)  Report  June  2,   1916,  published  1917,  of  the 
New  York  Commission  on  Building  Districts  and  Restrictions. 


282 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

required  area  without  disturbing  the  road  scheme,  but  the  use  to  which 

the  lots  are  to  be  put  and  the  local  customs  as  to  the  frontage  and  shape 

of  the  lots  will  fix  limits  in  regard  to  their  proportions  which  it  will 

probably  not  be  economical  to  disregard. 

The  Street  The  streets  should  be  so  located  that  they  connect  with  the  existing 

System:  its        streets  of  the  surrounding  territory  and  make  the  land  subdivision  a 

Relation  to  the      ^  .         ,  r     ,  i     i        -  rr        i  /-\ 

City  Plan  functional  part  of  the  whole  city  traffic  plan.     Our  more  progressive 

cities  now  "accept"  the  routes  of  the  main  thoroughfares  and  the 
more  Important  secondary  streets  in  advance  of  development,  as  the 
city-planning  commission  has  decided  they  should  be  in  their  broader 
relations,  and  no  privately  planned  streets  are  accepted  unless  they  are 
in  accordance  with  the  "city  map."  Where  no  city  map  exists,  if  it  Is 
evident  that  In  the  future  some  Important  artery  of  traffic  would  have 
its  best  location  through  the  property  to  be  developed,  then  it  should  be 
very  seriously  considered  whether  the  owners  of  the  property,  acting 
by  themselves  or  in  cooperation  with  neighboring  land-owners,  and  If 
possible  officially  through  the  city,  might  not  at  once  establish  such  a 
street,  plan  It  in  line  and  gradient  appropriately  for  its  through  traffic, 
and  arrange  the  size  and  shape  of  the  lots  upon  It  and  the  plan  of  the 
minor  streets  connecting  with  It,  with  the  same  considerations  In  view. 
If  no  such  main  artery  of  traflftc  Is  to  be  predicted,  and  a  quiet  residential 
neighborhood  Is  being  planned,  It  Is  often  desirable  so  to  arrange  the 
roads  that,  while  the  property  is  accessible,  through  traffic  Is  dis- 
couraged, and  the  roadways,  bearing  only  their  local  traffic,  will  be  less 
noisy  and  may  be  made  less  broad  than  otherwise  would  be  the  case.* 
Where  some  of  the  surrounding  property  is  of  a  better  class  of  develop- 
ment than  other  parts,  it  may  be  a  great  advantage  to  arrange  the 
roads  so  that  the  new  development  is  related  to  the  best  of  the  neighbor- 
ing land  and  so  to  some  extent  partakes  of  its  value. 
Alleys  In  some"  residential  subdivisions  alleys  for  service  traffic  are  intro- 

duced, giving  access  to  the  backs  of  the  lots.  So  long  as  the  desir- 
ability of  the  two  different  uses  for  the  two  sets  of  roads  continues,  this 
may  be  a  satisfactory  arrangement,  but  such  permanence  is  very  prob- 
lematical, and  the  narrower  service  roads  are  not  likely  to  be  satis- 
*  See  Chapters  X  and  XI  in  C.  M.  Robinson's  City  Planning,  with  Special  Refer- 
ence to  the  Planning  of  Streets  and  Lots,  1916.     (See  References.) 


LAND    SUBDIVISION 283 

factory  for  any  other  use,  if  the  land  is  later  cut  into  smaller  lots,  facing 
upon  both  sets  of  roads. 

The  different  types  of  street  systems  will  produce  characteristically  Characteristic 
different  esthetic  effects,  which  must  be  considered  in  relation  to  the  ^ff^'^^^  °J  Street 
desired  character  of  the  development.  A  curvilinear  system  fits  and 
expresses  variation  of  topography  and  will  probably  appear  unmotived 
unless  so  conditioned.  A  gridiron  system  gives  regularity,  which  may 
easily  become  monotony  if  the  buildings  are  too  nearly  alike.  Much  of 
the  eifect  which  the  subdivision  may  have  as  a  whole  will  be  due  to  the 
views  axially  along  the  streets.  A  simple  system  of  intersecting  straight 
streets  is  likely  to  be  ineffective  in  this  regard,  as  there  is  no  definite 
end  or  terminal  point  to  any  of  the  vistas.  A  system  of  streets  of 
flowing  curves  may  be  similarly  Indecisive  if  the  streets  are  many  or 
long.  There  is  likely  to  be  a  distinct  esthetic  advantage,  therefore,  in  a 
system  which  provides  straight  streets  of  reasonable  length  giving  good 
axial  views  of  interesting  objects,  such  as  churches  or  other  public 
buildings,  or  attractive  private  houses,  and  the  view  down  the  street 
from  the  building  Is  an  added  asset,  at  least  in  the  case  of  the  private 
house.  Too  great  interruption  of  street  continuity  in  this  way  is  a 
burden  upon  traffic,  but  it  sometimes  happens  that  an  irregular  topog- 
raphy may  be  developed  to  great  advantage  in  a  street  system  of 
short  straight  lines,  fitting  the  topography  practically  as  well  as  a  curved 
system,  and  being  both  cheaper  and  esthetically  more  efi'ective. 

Where  there  are  any  considerable  hills,  the  road  should  be  so  laid  Streets  in  Rela- 
out  upon  their  slopes  as  to  have  the  least  possible  gradient  and  at  the  'if^  ^°  , 
same  time  the  least  possible  cut  and  fill.  If  the  slopes  are  large  and 
simple,  this  may  be  done  by  a  gridiron  system  of  roads  running  diago- 
nally to  the  contours.  If  the  natural  slope  is  not  greater  than  the  possible 
maximum  gradient  of  the  road,  the  gridiron  system  may  be  laid  out 
with  one  set  of  roads  parallel  to  the  contours  and  the  other  at  right 
angles  to  them.  The  gridiron  system  has  certain  advantages  of  sim- 
plicity in  plotting  and  legally  describing  the  roads  and  lots,  and  where 
the  two  sets  of  roads  of  the  gridiron  system  intersect  at  right  angles  to 
each  other,  the  lots  may  be  entirely  rectangular  and  so  as  little  wasteful 
of  land  as  possible.  On  the  other  hand,  where  there  is  any  considerable 
natural  beauty  of  hill  and  valley  and  tree,  and  particularly  where  the 


284 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Subsurface 
Utilities 


Street  Widths 


hills  are  small  and  steep  and  variously  sloped,  an  irregular  system  of 
curving  roads,  taking  advantage  of  the  topography,  will  be  not  only  more 
appropriate  and  more  beautiful  but  almost  certainly  much  cheaper. 
(See  Drawing  XXXIII,  opp.  p.  280.) 

In  any  case,  the  roads  should  lie  as  nearly  as  possible  upon  the 
natural  surface.  Where  a  road  runs  along  a  hillside  it  should  be  re- 
membered that  it  is  commonly  considered  a  disadvantage  to  go  down 
into  a  lot  from  the  road.  The  road  should  therefore,  if  possible,  be 
kept  back  from  the  brows  of  steeper  declivities  so  that  there  may  be 
room  for  houses  at  the  level  of  the  road  between  the  road  and  the  down 
slope  without  any  great  amount  of  fill.  A  moderate  sinking  of  the 
road  below  the  lot  is  desirable.  Any  considerable  sinking  of  the  road, 
entailing  a  steep  bank,  is  expensive  in  future  lot  development,  particu- 
larly in  provision  for  access  by  automobile.  Of  course  if  the  roads 
are  far  enough  apart  to  give  separate  lots  larger  than  an  acre  or  so,  these 
considerations  of  relative  elevation  have  less  effect,  because  they  may 
perhaps  be  overcome  by  proper  location  of  private  drives  and  planting. 

In  determining  the  gradient  and  location  of  the  roads,  it  is  necessary 
also  to  consider  the  surface  drainage  of  the  lots  into  the  road  gutters, 
the  drainage  of  these  gutters  to  the  catch  basins,  and  the  running  of  the 
drainage  from  these  catch  basins,  either  in  a  separate  system  or  com- 
bined with  the  sewage  from  the  houses,  to  some  point  of  ultimate  dis- 
posal or  connection  with  the  city  system.  As  these  pipes  normally  run 
under  the  roads,  it  would  be  an  ideal  arrangement  from  this  point  of 
view  if  they  might  run  everywhere  with  the  gradient  of  the  road  to  where 
they  left  the  property,  thus  minimizing  the  amount  of  trench-digging 
or  encroachment  upon  land  devoted  to  lots.  The  ideal  location  for 
telephone  and  electric  light  wires  in  a  residential  subdivision  is  in  under- 
ground conduits,  but  it  is  an  expensive  proceeding  to  put  all  wires 
underground,  and  often  all  that  can  reasonably  be  done  is  to  put  all  the 
wires  on  poles  running  along  the  back  lines  of  the  lots,  the  poles  being 
located  to  be  as  little  conspicuous  as  possible,  and  the  private  wires 
running  to  the  backs  of  the  houses,  or  underground  when  otherwise  they 
would  be  especially  conspicuous. 

In  almost  all  towns  and  cities  there  are  certain  definite  requirements 
as  to  road  width  and  gradient  and  construction  which  must  be  complied 


LAND    SUBDIVISION 285 

with  before  the  road  can  be  accepted  by  the  municipality.  It  has  often 
been  the  case  in  the  past  that  a  rigid  enforcement  of  the  letter  of  these 
laws,  particularly  of  some  regulations  specifying  a  definite  proportion 
between  the  width  of  the  traveled  way  and  the  total  width  of  the  res- 
ervation, has  imposed  an  unnecessary  burden  upon  the  owners  and 
resulted  in  a  poorer  development  than  the  owners  would  otherwise  have 
constructed. 

The  width   of   the  public    right-of-way  from  lot-front    to  lot-front  Roadways  and 

should  not  be  too  much  diminished,  because  it  gives  not  only  room  to  ^^/^!f^^S 

'^      .      .  citrips 

traffic,  but  light,  air,  and  sufficient  setting  for  the  buildings.  The  width 
of  the  actual  traveled  roadway,  however,  in  a  street  which  carries  only 
the  local  residential  traffic  of  one  block,  need  give  at  the  most  only  space 
for  one  vehicle  to  stand  and  two  to  pass,  and  often  room  for  two  vehicles 
to  pass  —  sixteen  feet  —  is  sufficient  for  all  practical  purposes  and  better 
than  more,  if  the  blocks  are  short  and  the  street  intersections  allow  of 
easy  turning  of  automobiles.  The  rest  of  the  space  from  front-line  to 
front-line  of  abutting  properties  may  then  contain  besides  the  sidewalks 
a  considerable  planting  strip  between  the  sidewalks  and  the  road.  This 
planting  strip  may  contain  not  only  trees  but  perhaps  shrubs  serving  as 
further  decoration  and  cutting  off  the  noise  and  dust  of  the  roadways 
from  the  adjoining  properties.  Where  there  is  considerable  difference 
between  the  level  of  the  road  and  that  of  the  adjoining  land,  this  differ- 
ence may  be  taken  up  wholly  or  in  part  in  the  planting  strip,  and  the 
cost  of  grading  of  the  street  and  of  the  private  entrance  roads  may  be 
thereby  made  much  less  than  if  the  sidewalks  were  put  everywhere 
mechanically  in  the  same  relation  to  the  crown  of  the  road.  If  the 
traveled  way  must  at  some  future  time  be  increased  in  width,  the 
planting  strip  may  be  at  the  beginning  so  graded  and  the  trees  so  set 
out  that  this  change  may  be  later  made  without  disturbance  of  side- 
walk or  planting. 

The  sidewalks  are  usually  better  next  the  property  line  rather  than  Sidewalks 
next  the  road,  both  for  convenience  and  economy  and  for  appearance' 
sake.  Like  the  roads,  the  sidewalks  should  be  built  no  wider  than  the 
traffic  requires.  Room  for  two  people  to  walk  abreast  or  for  two  people 
to  pass  —  say,  four  feet  —  is  enough  on  a  street  which  has  only  a  few 
lots  abutting  upon  it.     On  streets  where  the  foot  traffic  is  very  light 


286 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

one  sidewalk  only  may  be  constructed,  and  in  rural  localities  separate 
paved  sidewalks  may  perhaps  be  omitted  altogether,  particularly  where 
the  subdivision  consists  of  large  properties  and  the  traffic  is  infrequent 
and  mostly  by  vehicle.  Usually  even  in  such  cases,  however,  it  is  better 
to  have  some  safe  line  for  pedestrian  traffic.  The  sidewalk  may  take  the 
form  of  an  irregular  path,  sometimes  near  the  road,  sometimes  near  the 
property  line,  making  its  way  among  trees  and  over  somewhat  irregular 
gradients,  an  inexpensive  and  appropriate  arrangement  persisting  until 
great  increase  in  the  traffic  requires  a  more  definite  construction. 
Lot  Sizes  As  we  have  seen,  the  sizes  of  lots  in  a  land  subdivision  scheme  will 

be  primarily  determined  by  the  mode  of  life  and  scale  of  expenditure 
of  the  people  who  are  to  own  them,  and  they  should  not  vary  in  size 
in  any  one  neighborhood  so  greatly  as  to  make  some  of  them  unfit  for 
the  use  of  people  of  the  general  class  for  which  the  neighborhood  is 
designed.  But  within  these  limits  some  variation  of  size  is  not  only 
allowable  but  desirable.  On  an  irregular  topography  with  curving 
roads,  an  attempt  to  make  all  lots  of  the  same  size  will  produce  some  lots 
of  unusual  and  inconvenient  shape.  Moreover,  the  people  who  come 
to  buy  lots  do  not  all  require  exactly  the  same  thing,  and  a  certain 
number  of  lots  somewhat  larger  and  somewhat  smaller  than  the  general 
average  may  perfectly  well  be  sold  to  advantage  before  the  last  of  the 
lots  come  to  be  disposed  of.  Where  there  is  little  distinction  between 
one  lot  and  another  and  few  existing  trees,  the  demand  for  lots  of  a  size 
different  from  the  average  may  be  met  by  selling  two  lots  together  or 
even  a  portion  of  a  lot  if  the  general  lot  size  be  large  enough.  Some- 
times this  condition  is  met  by  having  the  land  divided  into  strips  of  a 
constant  depth  and  a  narrow  width,  for  instance  fifteen  feet,  and  selling 
to  one  purchaser  any  number  of  strips  over  a  fixed  minimum,  perhaps 
four.  Where  the  lots  have  been  designed  so  that  their  boundary  lines 
are  placed  and  their  probable  house  locations  chosen  in  order  to  pre- 
serve some  natural  beauty,  this  splitting  of  lots  into  small  units  cannot 
readily  be  done. 
Lot  Width  and  The  minimum  width  of  a  lot  will  be  determined  by  the  average  width 
^^^'^  of  such  a  house  as  would  be  built  by  the  average  prospective  purchaser, 

and  the  advisable  clearance  between  house  and   house  for  air,  light, 
planting,  for  entrance  roads,  or  for  garages  or  other  service  buildings. 


LAND    SUBDIFISION 287 

The  minimum  depth  of  a  lot  will  be  the  average  depth  of  the  predict- 
able house  plus  such  set-back  from  the  street  as  the  restrictions  require, 
plus  such  depth,  behind  the  house,  for  service  or  pleasure  as  the  general 
habits  of  the  future  owners  will  demand.  Local  custom  is  a  very  strong 
factor  in  this  matter  of  depth.  In  many  localities  land  is  sold  by  the 
front  foot,  based  on  an  average  depth  of  perhaps  a  hundred  feet, 
and  any  depth  greater  than  a  hundred  feet  will  often  not  greatly  add 
to  the  possible  selling  price  per  front  foot.* 

On  a  flat  topography  it  is  usual  to  have  the  depth  greater  than  the  Lot  Shape 
width,  for  the  obvious  reason  that  thus  more  lots  of  a  given  area  may 
be  served  by  a  given  length  of  street,  and  consequently  less  street  cost 
charged  against  each  lot.  \^'here  the  street  runs  sharply  downhill 
this  same  arrangement  remains  the  best,  as  it  puts  the  long  dimension 
of  the  lots  parallel  to  the  contours.  On  the  other  hand,  where  the  street 
is  approximately  level  on  a  hillside  and  the  lots  run  sharply  up  and 
down  from  the  street,  an  arrangement  of  lots  with  their  long  dimension 
parallel  to  the  street  is  often  the  best,  in  spite  of  the  fact  that  it  brings 
the  streets  closer  together,  because  otherwise  the  back  portions  of  long 
narrow  lots  would  be  practically  inaccessible  and  worthless. 

The  exigencies  of  topography  and  consequent  irregular  street  systems 
often  produce  blocks  which  cannot  be  cut  up  into  rectangular  lots. 
In  large  lots  this  may  not  be  a  matter  of  great  importance,  since  the 
relation  of  the  house  to  the  street  line  and  to  the  lot  line  may  perfectly 
well  be  varied.  In  small  lots,  however,  an  irregular  lot  shape  may  pro- 
duce great  inconvenience  of  access  or  inconvenience  in  utilization  of 
the  irregular  pieces  of  land  left  between  the  house  and  the  boundaries. 
Irregular  shapes  cannot  always  be  avoided,  but  when  made,  the  designer 
should  be  sure  that  they  are  capable  of  economical  use.  There  are 
cases  where  the  topography  is  varied  and  irregular,  but  where  never- 
theless an  economical  and  efficient  scheme  of  subdivision  can  be  worked 

*  For  a  discussion  of  lot  widths  and  depths  see  the  Proceedings  of  the  National 
Conference  on  City  Planning  for  191 5,  Best  Methods  of  Land  Subdivision.  (See 
References.)  Also  see  paper  before  National  Conference  on  Housing  by  F.  L. 
Olmsted,  Jr.,  Land  Subdivision  from  the  Point  of  View  of  a  Development  Company, 
published  in  Housing  Conference  Proceedings  for  191 5  and  in  Real  Estate  Magazine, 
Oct.  1915,  V.  6,  p.  43-50- 


288 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

out  by  using  irregular  lots,  if  it  be  possible  to  fix  beforehand  the  approxi- 
mate house-locations  and  perhaps  the  general  scheme  of  development 
of  each  lot.  This  more  detailed  study  raises  the  cost  of  the  design, 
and  many  purchasers  are  averse  to  accepting  predetermined  schemes 
for  the  development  of  their  property,  but  sometimes  land  can  be 
handled  in  this  way  which  would  entail  prohibitive  construction  ex- 
pense if  developed  in  any  stereotyped  fashion.  (See  Drawing  XXXIV, 
opposite.) 

If  an  irregular  block  is  to  be  cut  up  into  lots,  it  should  be  nowhere 
so  deep  between  street  and  nearest  street  that  the  two  lots  lying  back 
to  back  in  this  part  of  the  block  shall  be  of  too  great  a  depth.  To  some 
extent  such  a  difficulty  may  be  minimized  by  designing  lots  of  greater 
area  in  such  a  place  so  that  they  may  have  greater  depth  without  hav- 
ing undesirable  proportions,  but  there  is,  as  we  have  seen,  a  more  or 
less  definite  limit  of  size  of  lot  which  is  likely  to  be  salable  in  a  given 
location.  Special  pains  should  be  taken  in  arranging  the  lot  bound- 
aries to  avoid  making  any  angle  considerably  less  than  a  right  angle ; 
and,  where  it  is  possible,  the  boundary  lines  of  each  lot  should  run  straight 
between  corners,  thus  avoiding  slight  additional  angles  to  complicate 
the  plotting  and  description  of  the  lot.  In  subdividing  a  block  into  lots, 
in  general  the  designer  will  begin  by  setting  off  a  separate  lot  in  each 
corner  of  the  block.  These  corner  lots  will  probably  be  larger  than 
the  average  because  they  are  subject  to  restrictions  along  both  street 
fronts,  and  the  amount  of  land  available  for  house  site  is  by  so  much 
reduced.  The  side  lines  of  all  the  lots  will  be  drawn  in  each  case  as 
far  as  may  be  at  right  angles  to  the  street  line,  and  so  spaced  in  the 
length  of  the  block  that,  with  a  depth  in  general  half  the  depth  of  the 
block  at  that  point,  each  lot  is  given  a  salable  size.  This  must  be  done 
of  course  without  producing  a  frontage  on  the  street  too  narrow  for 
use  or  too  broad  for  economy.  If  these  conditions  cannot  be  reason- 
ably met,  it  will  probably  be  desirable  to  consider  changing  the  shape 
of  the  block  even  at  some  additional  expense  of  road  construction. 
Lot  Orientation  Where  the  lots  are  small  enough  so  that  the  location  of  the  house  is 
more  or  less  fixed  between  the  sides  of  the  lot,  and  where  —  as  is  usually 
the  case  under  such  circumstances  —  it  is  customary  to  place  the  house 
parallel  to  the  street  and  as  near  the  street  as  the  restrictions  allow, 


LAND    SUBDIVISION 289 

thereby  leaving  the  maximum  private  area  behind  the  house,  the  ori- 
entation of  the  streets  and  the  consequent  orientation  of  the  lots  and 
houses  become  a  matter  of  some  importance.*  A  street  running 
north  and  south,  then,  has  the  disadvantage  that  the  southern  rooms 
of  each  house  —  in  a  northern  climate  on  the  whole  the  desirable  rooms 
—  face  the  neighboring  house  close  at  hand  instead  of  enjoying  a  longer 
view  into  the  street  or  into  the  back  property.  A  staggering  of  the 
buildings,  one  forward  against  the  restriction  line,  the  next  back,  would 
largely  obviate  the  difficulty.  An  east  and  west  street  places  the 
southern  rooms  away  from  the  street  in  lots  on  one  side  and  towards 
the  street  in  lots  on  the  other  side.  Since  our  modern  houses  can  be 
designed  to  be  perfectly  efficient  with  either  exposure,  and  it  is  merely 
a  matter  of  personal  preference  which  is  the  better,  this  is  not  a  very 
real  difficulty.  The  shadow  of  one  house  upon  another  is  a  thing  to 
be  studied  when  the  houses  are  close  together.  Obviously  a  building 
must  be  very  near  another  to  cast  a  shadow  on  it  from  the  south  at 
noon  when  the  sun  is  high,  but  if  it  lies  to  the  southeast  or  the  south- 
west, even  if  it  is  a  considerable  distance  away,  it  may  cut  off  the  sun- 
light, and  cut  it  off  from  rooms  which  would  otherwise  be  pleasantest. 
In  general  it  may  be  said  that  so  long  as  it  is  possible  to  vary  the  loca- 
tion of  the  house  upon  the  lot,  and  of  the  rooms  within  the  house,  it 
is  usually  possible  to  get  sufficient  sunlight  on  a  lot  of  any  orientation, 
provided  that  the  lot  is  not  so  small  as  to  be  objectionable  for  other 
considerations  as  well. 

In  the  larger  residential  subdivisions  it  will  probably  be  necessary  Reserved  Areas 
to  provide  for  other  uses  of  portions  of  the  land  than  for  purposes  of 
residence  and  access.  Certain  lots  may  be  set  aside  for  churches,  for 
schoolhouses,  for  small  parks  or  open  spaces,  for  playgrounds.  The 
presence  of  the  churches  and  parks  will  increase  the  value  of  the  neigh- 
boring lots,  and  that  of  the  whole  subdivision  as  well.  Schools  and 
playgrounds,  while  an  asset  to  the  subdivision  as  a  whole,  are  likely 
to  exert  some  unfavorable  effect  on  the  value  of  the  lots  next  to  them. 
This  must  be  taken  into  consideration  in  choosing  the  site  for  any  of 
these  provisions  for  public  use.     These  should  be  located  in  proper 

*  Cf.  the  discussion  of  orientation  in  Raymond  Unwin's  Town  Planning  in  Practice, 
p.  310  ff. 
u 


290 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

relation  to  the  residential  areas  tributary  to  them,  and  they  often  may 
be  arranged  for  at  the  junctions  of  roads  with  the  double  advantage 
of  being  thus  particularly  accessible  and  of  making  use  of  a  corner  which 
on  account  of  its  shape  or  its  surface  might  have  been  difficult  to  use 
for  residential  lots.  In  addition,  the  church  or  the  schoolhouse  may 
be  an  important  object  visually  in  the  general  scheme,  pleasantly  clos- 
ing a  street  vista.  If  there  is  to  be  any  local  shopping  in  the  subdivision, 
this  should  be  definitely  provided  for.  This  may  require  nothing  more 
than  the  setting  aside  of  lots  at  some  convenient  corner  where  a  grocery 
store  and  a  drug  store  may  be  located.  If  the  subdivision  be  large 
enough  and  sufficiently  separated  from  other  residential  areas  it  may 
form  a  little  town  of  itself,  with  a  civic  center  in  which  buildings  for 
the  various  public  uses  may  be  grouped.  This  center  would  lie  on 
the  street-car  line  and  presumably  near  the  railroad  station  if  there  is 

one. 

Small  areas  may  be  set  aside  purely  for  decorative  purposes,  for 
greater  picturesqueness  or  greater  amplitude  in  the  street  design. 
The  junction  of  two  streets  may  thus  be  graced  with  a  planted  triangle, 
or  perhaps  a  more  considerable  area,  at  an  intersection  or  a  curve  in 
the  road,  may  be  dedicated  to  the  embellishment  of  the  whole  scheme 
because  it  cannot  be  economically  used  in  lots.  Special  pieces  of  land 
may  be  set  aside  for  community  parks  or  gardens,  serving  certain  re- 
stricted areas  only,  and  planned  to  be  administered  by  some  voluntary 
association  of  those  land-owners  whom  they  benefit.  A  little  children's 
playground  may  be  set  aside  in  the  center  of  a  block,  serving  that 
block  only.  This  too  may  be  planned  to  be  locally  administered,  but 
for  obvious  reasons  city  control  would  be  better  if  it  could  be  arranged. 
There  is  a  general  difficulty  in  arranging  minor  local  organizations  to 
take  care  of  local  areas,  because  the  body  of  people  concerned  is  con- 
stantly changing,  and  new  purchasers  of  lots  do  not  care  to  take  on 
such  an  indefinite  cooperative  responsibility.  It  is  better,  usually,  to 
be  able  to  leave  all  matters  of  public  administration  and  upkeep  to  the 
town  or  city  authorities  when  finally  the  land  developers  have  sold 
all  their  lots  and  withdrawn.  Those  managing  a  land  subdivision 
may  find  it  excellent  advertising  and  in  the  long  run  a  great  benefit 
to  turn  over  a  considerable  tract  of  land  to  a  country  club  on  easy 


LAND    SUBDIVISION  291 

terms.*  The  sacrifice  of  land  salable  as  lots  has  been  found  in  a  number 
of  cases  very  much  more  than  offset  by  the  greater  value  of  the  re- 
maining lots  due  to  the  social  and  recreational  advantage  of  the  presence 
of  the  club.  If  an  area  of  notable  natural  beauty  occurs  in  the  tract, 
the  development  company  may  endeavor  to  turn  this  over  to  the  city  as 
a  park,  in  order  that  it  may  constitute  a  permanent  attraction  to  pro- 
spective purchasers.  A  viewpoint  commanding  a  notable  prospect 
may  be  similarly  set  aside,  being  a  considerable  asset  to  the  develop- 
ment without  any  great  sacrifice  of  land  area.  Perhaps  space  for  a 
public  park  may  be  similarly  given  or  sold  cheaply  to  the  city,  even 
where  no  special  natural  beauty  exists,  if  this  comes  in  proper  relation 
to  the  whole  city  plan. 

By  his  planning  of  roads  and  lots,  by  his  provision  of  a  certain  kind  Restrictions 
of  utility  and  beauty  throughout  a  subdivision  scheme,  the  land  de- 
veloper may  in  certain  ways  determine  and  stabilize  the  character  of 
the  development,  but  whatever  may  be  done  to  the  land  before  its  sale 
in  lots,  it  will  still  be  in  the  power  of  the  individual  lot  owners,  by  what 
they  build  and  how  they  use  their  property,  to  make  or  mar  the  excel- 
lence and  permanence  of  the  whole  undertaking.  In  practically  all 
subdivisions  of  any  importance,  therefore,  restrictions  of  some  kind  are 
incorporated  in  the  deed  of  the  lot  as  a  condition  of  purchase,  which 
attempt  to  preclude  certain  uses  of  the  lot  detrimental  to  the  neighbor- 
hood. And  the  presence  of  these  restrictions  governing  all  the  sur- 
rounding lots  operates  to  raise  the  value  of  each  lot  much  more  than  it 
is  reduced  by  the  diminution  of  its  own  possible  uses  caused  by  the  re- 
strictions. The  particular  uses  which  are  precluded  by  restrictions 
should  of  course  differ  with  the  particular  type  of  development  to  which 
they  are  applied.  It  is  very  desirable,  if  the  lots  are  at  all  small,  that 
the  purchaser  should  be  bound  not  to  further  subdivide  his  lot,  for  this 
would  introduce  a  different  and  cheaper  type  of  development  which 
would  injure  the  value  of  adjacent  lots.  This  same  consideration 
applies  to  the  lots  remaining  unsold  in  the  hands  of  the  development 
company.     The  value  of  each  lot  bought  is  increased  by  the  under- 

*In  the  Kansas  City  "Country  Club  District,"  which  Mr.  J.  C.  Nichols  has 
developed,  the  land  for  the  Country  Club  was  leased  to  it  without  rent  for  twenty-five 
years. 


292 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

standing  that  the  neighboring  lots  will  be  developed  in  a  similar  manner, 
and  if  this  understanding  exists  it  should  commonly  be  given  legal 
force  by  a  clause  in  the  deed  of  sale  of  each  lot,  or  by  some  other  legal 
recognition  by  the  development  company.  If  certain  land  is  unre- 
stricted, or  differently  restricted  from  the  rest,  it  should  be  plainly 
so  shown  on  the  plan,  that  the  purchaser  may  not  be  deceived.  Some 
restriction  of  the  use  of  the  buildings  and  land  is  essential  to  the  char- 
acter of  any  residential  development.  Commercial  and  manufacturing 
activities,  residential  use  of  less  desirable  type,  or  anything  which  is 
unsanitary,  unduly  noisy,  unsightly,  or  in  any  other  way  a  nuisance  to 
the  neighborhood  should  be  prohibited.  Restrictions  of  this  kind  are 
often  made  elaborate  and  comprehensive,  and  it  is  desirable  that  they 
should  be  so,  because  upon  them  more  than  upon  any  other  set  of 
restrictions  the  success  of  the  neighborhood  depends. 

A  standard  may  be  set  for  the  value  and  appearance  of  the  houses  : 
each  house  may  be  required  to  cost  at  least  a  specified  sum  or  to  be 
constructed  in  a  specified  way  or  designed  by  certain  approved  archi- 
tects, or  —  and  this  is  common  —  to  have  its  plans,  however  obtained, 
accepted  by  the  development  company  before  the  house  may  be  con- 
structed. The  size  and  shape  of  the  house  may  be  restricted  :  it  may 
be  allowed  to  cover  only  a  certain  percentage  of  the  lot  area,  or  to  ex- 
tend across  only  a  certain  proportion  of  the  lot  frontage,  or  to  be  only 
so  many  feet  or  so  many  stories  in  height.  The  orientation  of  the 
building  and  the  elevation  of  the  first  floor  may  be  fixed  by  the  restric- 
tions. The  position  of  the  house  and  of  other  buildings  on  the  lot  may 
be  restricted ;  this  Is  perhaps  the  commonest  restriction  of  all.  The 
house  may  be  required  to  be  set  back  a  certain  number  of  feet  from  the 
street  and  a  certain  number  of  feet  from  the  side  lines  and  sometimes 
from  the  back  line  of  the  lot.  This  same  restriction  may  apply  to 
all  buildings  upon  the  lot,  but  often  garages  and  perhaps  other  small 
buildings  and  bay  windows  and  porches  on  the  main  house  may  be 
allowed  to  intrude  to  some  extent  into  the  areas  restricted  against  larger 
structures.  Minor  structures  may  have  special  restrictions  of  their 
own.  Garages  may  be  prohibited  within  a  certain  distance  of  the 
street ;  henhouses  may  be  relegated  to  the  area  behind  the  dwelling 
or  prohibited  altogether.     Other  structures  like  fences  and  walls  may 


LAND    SUBDIVISION 293 

be  regulated  or  prohibited,  at  least  in  front  of  the  houses,  in  the  inter- 
ests of  beauty  and  uniformity  of  appearance.  The  location  of  tele- 
graph poles  and  similar  structures  may  be  restricted  or  determined. 

These  various  restrictions  which  are  fixed  by  the  land  company 
are  almost  always  arranged  to  endure  for  a  limited  time  only.  It 
is  obviously  impossible  to  predict  in  most  instances,  for  more  than 
twenty  or  twenty-five  years  in  the  future,  what  the  desirable  use  of 
a  given  piece  of  land  may  be,  and  it  is  therefore  too  great  a  burden 
on  the  land  to  fix  its  use  by  legal  restriction  for  a  longer  time.  In  some 
communities  it  may  prove  feasible  to  arrange  for  further  continuance 
or  change  of  the  restrictions  at  the  expiration  of  this  time  by  majority 
vote  of  the  owners.* 

In  all  the  attempts  of  the  land  companies  to  assure  the  excellence 
and  stability  of  the  development  under  their  charge  they  are  laboring 
under  two  disadvantages.  They  have  control  only  of  a  portion  of  the 
neighborhood  and  they  are  not  themselves  able  to  predict  or  directly 
to  influence  the  development  of  neighboring  property.  When  they 
have  sold  the  last  of  the  land,  the}'  have  relinquished  all  power  over  it 
except  as  it  is  bound  by  the  temporary  restrictions  in  the  deeds,  and 
there  is  no  organized  body  to  take  their  place  in  caring  for  the  property 
as  a  whole,  except  as  this  may  be  done  by  the  community  at  large. 

It  is  evident  that  the  city  has  this  power,  and  our  cities  are  beginning,  Districting 
for  the  first  time  in  any  large  way,  intelligently  and  systematically 
to  exercise  it.  The  city  may  determine  on  a  plan  for  the  future  develop- 
ment of  all  its  holdings,  it  may  make  regulations  for  the  uses  of  these 
holdings,  confining  different  uses  to  their  appropriate  places,  and,  as 
the  city  wields  a  permanent  authorit}^,  it  may  at  any  time  modify  the 
details  of  its  regulations,  bearing  still  in  mind  their  main  purpose  and 
their  part  in  the  general  scheme. 

In  the  districting  laws  with  which  we  in  this  country  are  becoming 
f  amiliar,t  in  the  greater  repression  by  community  authority  of  individual 

*  This  point  is  discussed  in  the  Proceedings  of  the  National  Conference  on  City 
Planning,  1916,  in  Financial  Effect  of  Good  Planning  in  Land  Subdivision,  paper  by  J. 
C.  Nichols,  p.  91-106,  discussion,  p.  106-118;  and  Districting  through  Private  Effort, 
by  Alexander  S.  Taylor,  especially  p.  180-183. 

t  Cf.  footnote  on  p.  281. 


294 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


activity  which  is  not  for  the  community  good,  we  have  the  hopeful 
beginning  of  a  sane  and  organized  relation  between  land  development 
and  city  planning,  which  will  stabilize  and  simplify  the  work  of  real 
estate  development  and  do  away  with  a  vast  amount  of  wasted  —  be- 
cause unrelated  —  private  effort. 


V  l"^^      ^ii'''"  4   III     ^"'""■■■HU-ril--'*'^!!-'  "''''lit    ■.  _/",■. 


PART  IV 

LANDSCAPE   PARKS  AND   RESERVATIONS 

Man's  need  of  recreation  —  Classification  of  outdoor  recreation  areas — Their 
relation  to  the  city  plan  :  park  systems  —  The  large  landscape  park  — Site 

AND  available  LANDSCAPE  CHARACTER  UNITS  —  ExTENT  AND  SECLUSION  —  Park 

use  and  landscape  units  —  Landscape  char.\cters  best  fitted  to  park  use 
—  Pastoral  landscape  —  Wooded  landscape  —  Rocks  and  ledges  —  Brooks  and 
ponds  —  Uses  properly  served  by  a  landscape  park  —  Access  and  en- 
trances—  Circulation —  Roads  —  Bridle  paths  —  Footpaths  —  Interrelation 
of  roads  and  paths  —  Buildings  properly  serving  park  uses — Buildings  in 
relation  to  the  park  landscape  - —  Minor  structures  :  park  furniture  —  Park 
boundaries  and  gates  —  L.\ndscape  reservations  :  Municipal  and  Metro- 
politan —  Combination  with  other  uses  —  State  and  National  parks  and 
reservations  —  National  planning. 

If  any  community  of  men  is  to  be  successful  and  permanent,  Man's  Need 
it  must  provide  for  its  members  :  a  place  to  live,  a  place  to  work,  °^  Recreation 
facilities  for  transportation,  and  opportunities  for  recreation  and  in- 
spiration. In  regard  to  transportation,  water  supply,  waste  disposal, 
and  defense,  the  activities  of  civilized  communities  have  long  been 
organized  on  the  basis  that  the  community  as  a  whole  must  perform 
these  services  for  each  of  its  members,  and  that  each  member  shall 
contribute  to  the  support  of  the  whole,  or  at  least  that  certain  designated 
people  should  perform  the  ser\4ces,  with  community  support  and  under 
community  regulation.  In  all  our  larger  communities  it  has  become 
necessarv'  for  the  public  to  take  over  also  the  provision  and  supervision 
of  certain  kinds  of  recreation. 

Ever>'  one  needs  recreation,  that  is,  something  to  do  and  to  think 
of  that  is  not  work,  something  different  from  the  ordinary  routine  of 
existence ;  and  every  one  at  times  needs  inspiration,  that  is,  something 
to  make  him  see  the  world  and  his  place  in  it  in  some  broader  way,  to 
feel  the  presence  of  the  larger  forces  of  the  universe.     Men's  recreations 

29s 


296 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Classification 
of  Outdoor 
Recreation 
Areas 


will  differ  as  men  differ,  but  as  all  city  dwellers  are  alike  in  suffering, 
each  in  his  degree,  from  the  restriction  and  crowding  of  the  city,  so  they 
are  alike  in  needing  some  recreation  which  will  offset  this  restriction.* 
A  complete  antithesis  to  city  conditions,  and  so  an  effective  relief  from 
them  when  they  become  oppressive,  is  to  be  found  in  the  country  or 
in  wilder  nature. f     So  long  as   rural  or  natural  landscape  lies   close 
about  a  town,  and  every  man  can  seek  it  for  himself,  no  public  provision 
is  necessary  in  this  regard,  but  such  a  condition  is  plainly  impossible 
in  a  city  of  any  size,  and  it  has  long  been  the  case  %  that  cities  have 
reserved   and  developed  certain  large  open  areas  for  this  public  use. 
These  areas  were  acquired  in  many  different  and  often  fortuitous  ways, 
and  used  for  many  different  purposes.    They  had  little  in  common  except 
that  they  were  open  to  the  public  and  not  built  upon,  and  the  term 
"public  park"  which  we  came  loosely  to  apply  to  them  had,  and  un- 
fortunately in  many  places  still  has,  little  meaning  more  definite  than 
this.     It  is  obvious,  however,  that  there  are  many  different  kinds  of 
outdoor  recreation,  each  good  in  itself,  each  necessary  to  be  somewhere 
provided  for,  but  not  all  capable  of  being  carried  on  in  the  same  place 
at  the  same  time.     It  has  come  about  therefore  that  where  the  prob- 
lem of  outdoor  recreation  areas  has  been  studied  by  our  modern  cities, 
there  has  been  an  attempt  to  segregate  these  areas  and  to  develop 
them,  each  for  .its  own  function,  so  that  in  the  aggregate  as  an  organized 
whole  they  may  best  provide  all  the  forms  of  recreation  which  the 
community  owes  to  its  members. 

No  hard  and  fast  classification  is  possible,  for  the  needs  and  the 
opportunities  of  our  communities  vary,  but  in  a  rough  way  we  may 
differentiate  for  modern  American  cities  the  following  types  of  recre- 
ation areas  according  to  their  functions  §  : 

The  playground,  including:  the  children's  playground,  for  boys 
and  girls  under  twelve;    the  girls'  outdoor  gymnasium,  for  intensive 

*  Cf.  Chapter  V. 

t  Cf.  the  footnote  reference  to  F.  L.  Olmsted,  Sr.'s,  paper  on  Public  Parks,  on  p.  18. 

I  The  purchase  of  the  area  for  Central  Park  was  completed  in  1856. 

§  Cf.  the  classification  given  in  The  Size  and  Distribution  of  Playgrounds  in  Ameri- 
can Cities,  paper  by  Henry  V.  Hubbard  before  the  National  Conference  on  City  Plan- 
ning, with  discussion.     <Proceedings,  1914,  p.  265-304.) 


LANDSCAPE    PARKS 297 

use  by  girls  over  twelve ;  and  the  boys'  outdoor  gymnasium  or  restricted 
playfield,  for  very  intensive  use  by  boys  over  twelve. 

The  playfield,  for  the  active  play  of  adults  and  young  people  over 
twelve,  in  games  taking  considerable  space,  like  baseball,  football, 
tennis,  and  track  athletics. 

The  recreation  center,  perhaps  combining  all  the  above. 

Special  facilities  depending  upon  local  opportunities,  such  as  swim- 
ming pools,  wading  pools,  skating  ponds,  facilities  for  bathing  in  lake, 
river,  or  ocean ;   specially  developed  viewpoints  and  so  on. 

The  small  park,  or  "in-town  park,"  serving  a  dense  surrounding 
population,  not  pretending  to  a  rural  appearance  but  depending  upon 
its  design,  its  foliage  and  flowers,  sometimes  upon  architectural  acces- 
sories, —  providing  amusements  which  can  be  enjoyed  by  crowds,  and 
making  the  crowd  a  part  of  its  design.  "Commons,"  "public  gardens," 
many  of  our  larger  so-called  "squares,"  are  of  this  type.  The  "prome- 
nade," which  may  be  classed  here,  is  most  characteristically  adapted  to 
crowds,  and  dependent  upon  them.  Our  "parkways,"  which  serve 
as  pleasure  traffic  connections  for  our  large  parks,  have  a  local  use  in 
some  cases  like  small  parks.  In  modern  German  practice,  this  general 
conception  of  predominantly  formal  design  is  applied  also  to  parks  of 
considerable  extent,  which  with  us  would  be  treated  rather  as  land- 
scape parks.* 

The  large  landscape  park,  or  "country  park,"  designed  to  give,  as 
far  as  is  consistent  with  fairly  intensive  use,  all  the  sense  of  freedom 
that  the  unspoiled  country  gives,  and  being  the  nearest  thing  to  un- 
spoiled countrj"  that  most  of  the  city  dwellers  can  commonly  take  time 
to  enjoy.  It  is  fitted  to  receive  large  crowds  and  not  to  be  destroyed 
by  them,  and  indeed  not  to  be  crowded  by  them,  for  its  main  use  is 
still  to  relieve  a  man  from  too  close  contact  with  his  fellows. 

The  "reservation,"  a   public  holding  of  country  land,  perhaps  in 
connection  with  public  forests  or  water  supply,   made  accessible  by 
roads,  it  may  be,  but  not  yet  developed  for  intensive  recreational  use, 
and  frequented  mostly  by  picnic  parties  and  others  spending  at  least  Relation  of 
several  hours  at  a  time  in  the  open.  Recreation 

The  size  of  the  areas  for  these  various  purposes,  their  location  in  city  Plan: 

*  Cf.  Chapter  IV,  p.  54.  Park  Systems 


298 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


relation  to  each  other  and  the  city  plan,  have  come  to  be  a  matter  of 
definite  and  detailed  study.  In  general  it  is  evident  that  areas  inten- 
sively devoted  to  play  for  children  should  be  small,  numerous,  distrib- 
uted through  residential  areas  in  accordance  with  density  of  popula- 
tion, and  probably  bearing  some  relation  to  the  schoolhouses  in  their 
location;  that  the  smaller  in-town  parks  of  various  kinds,  and  espe- 
cially recreation  centers,  should  be  distributed  with  regard  to  density 
of  population  both  residential  and  also  industrial  and  commercial; 
that  the  landscape  parks  should  be  usually  more  on  the  outskirts  of 
the  city,  shaped  and  located  so  as  to  block  traffic  as  little  as  possible 
and  taking  advantage  of  opportunities  of  existing  landscape  beauty 
or  possibilities  of  its  creation.  The  large  out-of-town  parks  and  reser- 
vations should  be  selected  for  their  landscape  beauty,  present  or  pos- 
sible, with  due  consideration  of  the  probable  growth  of  the  community 
and  of  other  legitimate  uses  to  which  the  land  could  be  put,  so  that 
the  chosen  park  areas  may  meet  recreational  needs  and  not  block  the 
future  normal  growth  of  the  community.  Connecting  these  larger 
recreation  areas,  and  particularly  running  radially  from  the  center  of 
the  town  outwards,  should  be  designed  some  system  of  parkways,  that 
is,  some  provision  whereby  those  who  dwell  in  the  heart  of  the  city  may 
get  out  to  the  parks  and  back  again  to  their  homes  without  having  the 
recreation  which  they  obtain  from  the  open  places  counteracted  by 
a  long  journey  through  the  very  conditions  from  which  they  are  seeking 

relief. 

Of  all  these  different  forms  of  outdoor  recreation  facilities  we  have 
space  In  this  book  to  discuss  in  detail  but  one,  and  we  choose  the  large 
landscape  park,  because  the  design  of  this  lies  perhaps  more  completely 
than  does  that  of  some  of  the  others  in  the  province  of  the  landscape 
architect,  and  because  these  parks  are  in  many  ways  a  typical  product 
of  American  landscape  architecture,  in  which  a  style  of  design  *  has  been 
to  a  considerable  extent  wrought  out,  —  a  style  which  has  had  a  great 
effect  on  landscape  design  particularly  in  the  United  States. 
The  Large  The  landscape  park  (see  Drawing  XXXV,  opposite),  at  its  best, 

Landscape  (Jq^s  ^ore  than  to  offer  openness  and  freedom  from  the  city's  crowding 

and  oppression,  more  than  to  provide  naturally-growing  trees  and  grass 

*  Cf.  Chapter  IV,  p.  57. 


Park 


CITY    OF    BOSTON-PARK  AND  RECREATION  OEPY 

GENERAL     PLAN    OF 

FRANKLIN    PARK 


DRAWING  XXXV 


LANDSCAPE    PARKS 


299 


in  place  of  man-designed  masses  of  brick  and  mortar,  —  more  even 
than  to  present  beautiful  views  and  compositions  in  natural  materials.* 
The  park  does  all  this,  and  this  in  itself  is  a  great  service ;  but  besides 
this  it  gives,  to  every  man  who  has  the  sensitiveness  to  respond  to  it, 
inspiration  by  its  suggestion  of  the  greater  natural  forces  of  which  its 
beauty  is,  or  seems  to  be,  the  direct  manifestation.  It  is  seldom  that 
a  city  is  so  lucky  as  to  have  near  at  hand  really  notable  natural  scenery ; 
but  even  where  it  has  not,  its  landscape  parks  may  still  heighten  and 
perfect  the  type  of  natural  character  which  they  have,  so  that  they 
not  only  give  pleasure  by  their  own  beauty,  such  as  it  may  be,  but  also 
give  some  subtler  inspiration  by  their  naturalness. 

In  choosing  and  developing  the  site  for  a  landscape  park,  the  first  Site  and  Avail- 
consider  ations  are  what  landscape  character  or  characters  are  exempli-  ^j^  Landscape 
fied  within  its  bounds,  to  what  uses  a  park  having  these  characters  Units 
can  be  put,  and  how  completely  these  characters  may  be  preserved, 
enhanced,  and  maintained  when  the  park  is  so  used.  The  different 
kinds  of  available  landscape  should  be  considered,  so  that,  for  instance, 
the  freedom  and  opportunity  for  exercise  given  by  an  open  meadow, 
the  seclusion  and  shade  of  a  wood,  the  sweep  of  view  from  a  hill,  the 
interest  of  a  woodland  brook,  might  all  be  available  somewhere  in  the 
system.  A  very  rocky,  precipitous,  and  romantic  spot  might  be  desir- 
able on  account  of  its  great  interest;  but  the  future  effect  of  intensive 
use  on  this  character,  through  the  presence  of  crowds,  should  be  borne 
in  mind.  If  the  interesting  cliffs  and  bowlders  and  gnarled  trees  may 
be  looked  at  and  not  overrun,  such  a  piece  of  scenery  may  be  a  very 
desirable  portion  of  a  park.  If  its  romantic  ruggedness  is  likely  to 
become  disheveled  shabbiness  under  the  feet  of  the  crowd,  then  some 
less  interesting  but  more  permanent  character  might  well  be  chosen. 

Of  course  the  landscape  must  be  made  sufficiently  accessible  so  that 
it  may  be  enjoyed,  but  great  pains  should  be  taken,  particularly  in 
small-scale  landscape  units,  lest  the  introduction  of  a  road  or  path 
should  destroy  the  very  landscape  character  it  was  intended  to  dis- 

*  "First,  the  chief  end  of  a  large  park  is  an  effect  on  the  human  organism  by  an 
action  of  what  it  presents  to  view,  which  action,  Hke  that  of  music,  is  of  a  kind  that 
goes  back  of  thought,  and  cannot  be  fully  given  the  form  of  words." 

F.  L.  Olmsted,  Sr.,  Notes  on  the  Plan  of  Franklin  Park,  1886,  p.  106. 


300 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


play.  It  is  definitely  to  be  predicted  that  this  use  will  increase  in  in- 
tensity as  time  goes  on.  A  park  area  may  start  as  an  out-of-town 
reservation,  and  through  the  growth  of  population  become  in  time  al- 
most an  in-town  large  park.  It  is  essential  therefore  that  the  landscape 
characters  chosen  should  be  such  that  they  may  be  either  defended 
from  this  increased  use  when  it  reaches  such  an  intensity  as  to  be  harm- 
ful, or  else  that  the  character  may  be  modified  to  allow  this  increased 
use  without  too  great  loss  of  beauty.  This  question  between  stability 
and  convertibility  of  landscape  character  units  in  a  park  is  a  very  impor- 
tant one.  It  may  affect  the  plan  of  the  individual  park,  its  access  and 
circulation,  according  as  a  certain  scene  is  to  be  permanently  preserved, 
or  only  temporarily  enjoyed  so  long  as  the  increasing  use  does  not 
destroy  it,  and  later  turned  into  some  other  form  better  to  endure  the 
use.  It  may  affect  the  plan  of  the  whole  park  system,  according  as 
certain  uses  may  be  outgrown  by  certain  parks  and  taken  over  by  others. 
Exunt  and  If  it  is  in  any  way  possible,  the  park  should  contain  some  landscape 

Seclusion  units  which  give  an  effect  of  extent.     It  should  have  some  large  open 

area ;  it  should  dominate  a  distant  view.  For  in  this  visible  extent, 
more  than  in  any  other  one  thing,  the  park  is  likely  to  be  different  from 
the  town.  If  a  choice  might  be  made,  then,  between  one  site  covered 
with  a  compact  wood  and  one  with  sufficient  groves  but  also  consider- 
able opens,  the  second  site,  other  things  being  equal,  would  probably 
be  preferable  to  the  first.  Some  considerable  wooded  area,  however,  is 
necessary  in  a  park  in  order  that  people  may  walk  about  in  the  shade 
with  a  sense  of  freedom  and  ability  to  go  where  they  will  without  nec- 
essarily following  a  path,  and  so  that  many  people  may  do  this  with- 
out being  unpleasantly  aware  of  one  another's  presence. 

Since  the  park  is  essentially  something  different  from  the  town  it 
should  be  screened  from  the  town.  So  long  as  the  views  out  of  the  park 
are  into  open  country-side,  they  may  well  be  allowed  to  remain  open, 
but  it  is  dangerous  to  let  the  beauty  of  the  park  depend  considerably 
upon  them,  if  at  some  future  time  the  town  is  likely  to  surround  the 
park.  It  is  possible,  however,  in  some  cases  to  arrange  views  from  the 
park  across  adjacent  lower  land  to  a  distant  hill,  and  so  to  manage  these 
views  that  the  lowland  may  be  filled  with  buildings  without  obtruding 
upon  the  view.     Where  the  town  comes  up  to  the  boundary  of  the 


LANDSCAPE    PARKS 301 

park,  there  is  likely  to  be  pressure  brought  to  bear  by  the  abutters  to 
provide  for  views  into  the  park  from  the  surrounding  buildings.  It  is 
almost  certainly  a  mistake  to  allow  this.  The  benefit  of  the  view 
accrues  only  to  those  in  the  houses  surrounding  the  park;  the  detri- 
ment of  the  incongruous  buildings  visible  from  the  landscape  park 
falls  upon  all  the  inhabitants  of  the  whole  city  who  use  the  park. 

Some  people  seek  a  landscape  park  for  vigorous  exercise  in  the  open  Park  Use 

air,  walking  or  riding,  or  playing  such  games  as  are  permitted.     Others  '^"^  ^V}^: 

r  ■  1  o  1-1         r  L-i  •  r  J   scape  Umts 

go  for  quiet  and  rest,     borne  like  the  exhilaration  01  open  spaces  and 

distant  views,  or  the  interest  of  rugged  scenery.  Others  prefer  a  se- 
cluded and  retired  spot,  peaceful  and  intimate,  with  the  small  beauties 
of  ferns  and  wild  flowers.  Some  people  are  glad  to  mingle  with  their 
kind  ;  others  wish  to  be  alone.  The  park  should  offer  as  far  as  possible 
to  each  man  his  own  enjoyment.  There  should  be  different  areas 
fitted  for  the  different  legitimate  park  uses  as  well  as  distinguished  by 
different  landscape  characters.  The  frequenters  of  the  park  will  thus 
find  a  double  source  of  sustained  interest,  —  the  possibility  of  various 
enjoyments,  and  the  studied  sequence  of  landscape  effects.* 

In  our  American  parks,  the  landscape  character  which  has  proved  Landscape 
in  many  instances  to  be  the  most  readily  obtainable,  the  most  fitted  ^p^-?lf'f^^p^T 
to  diverse  uses,  the  easiest  of  upkeep,  is  a  pastoral  character,  having  Use 
much  in  common  with  the  English  pastoral  scenery,  and  being  in  many 
cases  an  adaptation  of  existing  pasture  land  and  meadow  land  and  sur- 
rounding woods  to  the  needs  of  a  park.      (See  Plates  31  and  33.)     The  Pastoral 
turf  carpet  of  the  open  areas,  mowed  or  kept  down  by  sheep,  has  the  landscape 
advantage  of  its  own  beauty,  of  harmony  with  the  rest  of  the  landscape, 
together  with  reasonable  cheapness  of  upkeep  and  considerable  resist- 
ance to  wear.     The  woods  crowning  the  higher  land,  enframing  the 
turf  areas,  segregating  one  unit  from  another,  —  when  they  are  made  of 
high-branched  deciduous  trees  arranged  in  open  groves  as  they  may 
be  in   pastoral   landscape,  —  may  endure   considerable   traffic   among 
them  without  great  harm,  and  make  pleasant  resting  places  command- 
ing views  across  the  open  meadows.     The  shrub  plantings,  which  are 
more  difficult  to  maintain  and  to  police,  are  chiefly  used  as  screens, 
along  the  boundary  of  the  park  or  between  one  part  of  the  park  and 

*  Cf.  Chapter  V,  p.  71-72. 


302 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

another.  They  are  also  often  planted  as  a  protection  on  steeply  slop- 
ing ground  which  would  be  denuded  by  traffic  if  left  open,  or  in  any 
other  areas  from  which  traffic  should  be  kept  away.  The  shrub  areas, 
and  often  some  of  the  tree  plantings  as  well,  must  themselves  be  pro- 
tected from  destruction  by  foot  traffic,  if  they  lie  so  that  there  is  a 
temptation  for  people  to  force  a  passage  through  them,  and  particularly 
when,  under  these  circumstances,  they  stand  upon  sloping  ground 
where  the  soil  will  be  worn  and  carried  away  by  water  if  people  walk 
upon  it  to  any  extent.  Dense  prickly  shrubs  like  barberry  and  haw- 
thorn will  often  defend  themselves,  the  ground  surface,  and  perhaps 
the  trees  among  them,  if  once  they  are  established.  In  good  design, 
however,  it  is  often  possible  to  arrange  the  lines  of  travel  so  that  people 
are  attracted  from  one  opening  to  another,  and  there  is  no  considerable 
temptation  to  the  public  to  make  short-cuts  through  the  plantations. 

This  pastoral  park  design  in  open  meadow,  undulation  of  ground 
surface,  and  groups  and  masses  of  open  trees,  though  it  may  be  thor- 
oughly satisfactory  as  the  character  of  one  unit,  even  of  the  largest 
unit  of  the  park,  becomes  monotonous  when  too  much  repeated,*  and 
in  many  instances  it  has  been  unintelligently  imposed  upon  park  areas 
in  which  some  existing  local  character  might  have  been  seized  upon  to 
produce  a  different  effect  well  worth  such  extra  cost  of  maintenance  as 
it  might  entail. 
Wooded  Land-  Within  the  wooded  areas,  different  characters  may  be  brought  about 

^  by  developing  different  kinds  of  trees.     Even  when  a  park  is  made  from 

an  area  already  wooded  with  a  mixed  stand  of  timber,  it  is  possible  by 
judicious  cutting  and  planting  to  produce,  for  instance,  a  pine  grove  in 
one  place,  a  beech  grove  in  another,  an  aspen  grove  in  a  third,  and 
their  different  effects  will  make  new  appeals  to  the  observer  without 
necessarily  destroying  the  broad  effect  of  the  forest  mass.  The  destruc- 
tive results  of  traffic  upon  the  roots  of  some  trees  tend  to  limit  the 
choice  of  the  designer  in  the  characters  of  woodland  which  he  may  use. 
Hemlocks,  for  instance,  are  likely  to  be  destroyed  by  too  great  trampling 
of  the  ground.  The  relation  of  topography,  traffic,  and  choice  of  trees 
should  be  considered  from  the  first.  Areas  which  must  be  frequently 
traversed  or  used  for  picnic  or  music  groves  must  be  planned  eventually 

*  Cf.  footnote  on  p.  82. 


LANDSCAPE    PARKS 


303 


to  contain  trees  which  will  endure  this  treatment.  If  there  are  existing 
areas  of  natural  beauty,  containing  delicate  vegetation  which  would 
be  destroyed  by  traffic,  or  if  there  is  an  opportunity  to  obtain  such 
beauty,  too  great  to  be  neglected,  traffic  lines  must  be  so  arranged  and 
such  policing  provided  that  these  particularly  decorative  areas  may  be 
enjoyed  but  not  traversed. 

Rocks  and  ledges,  particularly  those  which  are  high  and  steep,  are  Rocks  and 
usually  well  worth  preserving  as  objects  of  interest  in  a  park,  but  they  ^^^i'^ 
must  be  protected  by  directing  the  traffic  much  in  the  way  that  we  have 
just  discussed.  People  may  be  brought  to  the  foot  of  the  cliff  where 
they  can  look  at  its  face  with  its  decoration  of  moss  and  fern,  and 
they  may  be  brought  to  the  top  of  the  cliff  where  they  can  get  the  effect 
of  its  height  and  a  certain  pleasing  sense  of  danger  in  being  near  the 
brink  of  a  precipice,  and  where  perhaps  there  may  be  a  good  view.  The 
paths  should  be  so  laid  out,  perhaps  brambles  and  strong-growing 
thorny  plants  should  be  so  arranged,  and  the  region  should  be  so  po- 
liced, that  danger  to  the  people  and  destruction  to  the  scenic  beauty 
by  persons  attempting  to  traverse  the  steeper  slopes  would  be  made 
very  slight. 

Brooks  and  ponds  *  are  very  desirable  features  in  parks.  They  give  Brooks  and 
a  life,  a  unity,  and  a  center  of  interest  to  the  landscape  which  will  often  °°""^ 
make  the  difference  between  a  monotonous  scene  and  a  charming  one. 
(See  Plate  32.)  It  very  frequently  happens,  then,  that  the  landscape 
architect  is  called  upon  to  design  a  pond  or  stream  where  none  already 
exists,  or  to  adapt  an  existing  one  to  the  uses  of  a  park.  Again  the 
difficulty  arises  of  producing  or  preserving  the  natural  character  while 
providing  for  intensive  use,  and  this  fact  will  tend  to  restrict  the  kinds 
of  natural  character  of  brook  and  pond  which  may  be  used.  In  the 
case  of  streams  it  may  be  possible  to  keep  the  traffic  away  from  the 
banks,  except  at  designated  places,  by  planting  and  proper  path  design, 
and  to  have  at  these  places  bridges  or  some  treatment  of  rocks  and  step- 
ping stones  and  gravel  beaches  which  may  be  walked  upon  without 
great  damage.  The  views  upstream  and  down  from  these  selected 
places  will  of  course  be  wrought  out  with  special  care.  Natural  ponds, 
particularly  in  a  meadow  country,  are  likely  to  have  marshy  banks 

*Cf.  Chapter  VIII,  p.  137. 


which  cannot  be  walked  upon  by  crowds  without  damage.  Sometimes 
proper  arrangement  of  paths  will  keep  the  traffic  where  it  is  intended 
to  go,  particularly  if  the  marsh  is  wet  enough  to  be  unpleasant  footing, 
but  a  certain  general  suggestion  of  unhealthfulness  in  such  a  place  and 
the  very  real  difficulty  of  combating  mosquitoes  make  such  a  pond 
often  undesirable  in  a  much  frequented  park.  In  the  case  of  artificial 
ponds  where  the  water  supply  is  limited,  as  it  often  is,  such  a  shore 
treatment  usually  would  have  the  additional  disadvantage  of  wasting 
the  water  by  seepage  into  the  ground.  If  it  is  unavoidable  that  people 
should  walk  along  directly  upon  the  shore  of  the  pond,  then  a  sand 
or  gravel  beach  is  almost  the  only  shore  treatment  that  can  be  used  ; 
certainly  no  shore-growing  herbaceous  plants  will  be  possible,  except 
such  things  as  grow  actually  in  the  water.  It  is  much  better  with 
ponds,  as  with  streams,  to  have  a  path  skirt  the  water,  far  enough 
back  from  the  shore  in  most  places  to  admit  of  naturalistic  shore  treat- 
ment, but  commanding  sufficient  glimpses  of  the  pond  from  everywhere 
along  its  course,  and  at  places  coming  out  upon  beaches  or  projecting 
rocks  or  perhaps  bridges,  from  which  particularly  designed  uninter- 
rupted views  may  be  obtained.      (See  again  Plate  32.) 

It  is  a  frequent  practice  to  keep  some  water  fowl  on  a  pond  in  a  park 
as  a  feature  of  interest,  even  when  no  zoological  collections  are  kept 
elsewhere  in  the  park.  If  there  are  not  too  many  birds  in  proportion 
to  the  size  of  the  pond  and  if  they  are  given  an  island,  where  they  may 
stay  upon  the  land  by  themselves,  the  pond  and  the  pond  shores  will 
not  be  appreciably  injured.  If  too  many  birds  are  allowed  upon  a 
pond,  however,  the  muddied  shores,  the  muddy  water  of  the  pond, 
and  the  floating  feathers  may  more  than  offset  the  advantage  of  the 
interest  in  the  birds  themselves. 

These  general  considerations  among  others  are  worth  taking  into 
account  in  the  design  of  any  landscape  park  in  this  country,  but  every 
park  will  bring  its  own  particular  problems.  The  designer  must  bear 
in  mind  the  legitimate  uses  to  which  the  park  is  to  be  put  and  plan  his 
woods  and  open  areas  in  sufficient  relation  to  these  uses,  but  he  should 
also,  as  the  best  means  of  making  his  park  serve  its  primary  use,  study 
the  natural  character  of  his  ground,  make  the  most  of  existing  smaller 
ground  forms  and  characters,  and  make  the  use-units  of  his  design 


-«-/  -^J.  X  »    j_^  Kj  vi  ^x  J.     J.:/        J.     ^x  ±\,  x\.  kj 


305 


coincide  as  far  as  may  be  with  character-units  of  the  topography. 
His  park  should  be  a  work  of  art,  and  its  planning  an  act  of  artistic 
composition.  Each  separate  scene  may  be  composed  much  as  the 
painter  composes  the  forms  upon  his  canvas,  but  the  total  composition 
of  a  landscape  park  is  not  only  a  summation  of  a  series  of  views,  not 
only  a  proper  provision  for  rest  and  exercise,  it  is  a  harmony  in  natu- 
ralistic landscape  effects.* 

As  we  have  seen,  a  landscape  park  should  properly  serve  many  dif-  Uses  Properly 
ferent  purposes  within  its  province,  and  for  the  greatest  efficiency  of  Served  by  a 
the  park  it  should  be  determined  by  the  designer  to  what  purposes  pTrf'''^' 
the  park  at  large  may  be  devoted  without  any  particular  adaptation 
of  its  character,  for  what  purposes  segregated  areas  should  be  provided, 
and  for  what  purposes  it  will  be  desirable  to  provide  areas  of  particular 
and  definite  shape,  probably  not  usable  for  any  other  ends.  In  a  gen- 
eral way  the  recreation  which  a  person  may  obtain  in  a  park  is  of  two 
kinds  :  on  the  one  hand,  active  exercise ;  and  on  the  other,  passive 
recreation,  that  is,  rest  together  with  the  contemplation  of  interesting 
sights.  For  the  first,  such  activities  as  walking,  picnicking,  folk  danc- 
ing, various  running  games  of  children,  coasting,  tobogganing,  snow- 
shoeing,  skiing,  skating,  swimming,  boating,  archery,  might  be  carried 
on  in  a  landscape  park  without  any  considerable  change  of  the  natural 
forms  to  adapt  them  to  these  uses.  Such  activities  as  golf,  tennis 
on  grass  courts,  lawn  bowls,  require  the  modeling  or  leveling  of  cer- 
tain portions  of  ground,  but  still  need  make  no  very  great  change 
in  the  landscape.  The  pleasures  of  listening  to  music  or  enjoying  out- 
of-door  dramatics  or  spectacles  may  be  provided  for  by  architectural 
music-courts  or  outdoor  theaters,  or  they  may  be  carried  on  in  music 
groves  or  natural  amphitheaters  without  much  change  in  the  landscape 
character  of  the  park. 

A  promenade  for  crowds,  however,  or  any  area  properly  designed 
for  the  use  of  people  who  wish  to  walk  back  and  forth  in  the  company 
of  many  others  of  their  kind  and  to  be  entertained  by  the  sight  of  in- 
teresting things  along  the  way,  will  introduce  into  a  park  an  element 
which  cannot  be  completely  made  a  part  of  any  natural  landscape  char- 
acter.    Similarly  zoological  gardens  and  displays  of  cultivated  flowers, 

*  Cf.  Chapter  VI,  p.  83. 


3o6 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

although  their  design  may  be  treated  in  a  naturahstic  or  at  least 
informal  manner,  as  may  the  design  of  a  promenade,  still  are  obviously 
of  man's  making  rather  than  of  nature's,  are  places  for  crowds  rather 
than  for  mere  neighborliness  or  for  solitude,  and  therefore  are  best 
treated  as  a  separate  unit  in  the  park  design.  Indeed  in  most  cases 
the  design  of  promenades,  at  least,  is  best  treated  in  a  frankly  formal 
manner. 

The  recreations  of  riding,  driving,  and  motoring,  and  often  of  walk- 
ing, have  their  very  considerable  effect  on  the  design  of  the  park  on 
account  of  the  construction  of  roads  or  paths.* 

These  various  recreations,  though  each  is  individually  desirable, 
will  interfere  with  each  other  in  different  degrees,  and  they  are  by  no 
means  all  equally  desirable  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  number  of 
people  who  may  engage  in  them  per  unit  area  of  land  employed.  Golf, 
for  instance,  takes  a  very  large  amount  of  land  and  comparatively 
few  persons  can  play  at  the  same  time  on  the  same  course,  while  the 
course  is  rendered  dangerous  to  any  one  who  might  venture  upon  it  for 
any  other  purpose.  A  golf  course,  therefore,  is  likely  to  prove  an  in- 
advisable use  of  ground  except  in  a  park  not  as  yet  intensively  used, 
or  on  a  piece  of  park  property  which  can  properly  be  set  aside  for  this 
purpose  alone.  Archery  also  requires  a  space  to  itself  while  it  is  being 
carried  on,  but  since  it  is  seldom  practiced  in  any  park  for  more  than  a 
few  hours  a  day  it  is  usually  possible  to  meet  the  danger  by  proper 
policing  of  the  area,  which  at  other  times  is  open  to  general  use.  Coast- 
ing, tobogganing,  and  ski-jumping,  though  they  may  be  carried  on  by  a 
few  people  with  no  particular  danger  or  supervision,  if  they  are  partici- 
pated in  by  great  crowds  must  be  supervised  and  confined  to  definite 
localities  properly  prepared.  At  some  inconvenience  to  the  players, 
tennis  may  be  played  with  no  apparatus  except  courts  marked  out  upon 
the  ground  and  removable  nets.  A  group  of  tennis  players  on  an  open 
park  lawn  would  be  considered  by  most  people  an  interesting  rather 
than  an  incongruous  feature,  and  when  the  play  is  over  nothing  need 
remain  but  the  lines  of  the  courts  upon  the  turf.  (See  Plate  33.) 
Such  tennis  courts  are  hardly  fit  for  the  most  scientific  play,  but  dirt 
courts  with  back-stops  belong  in  a  playfield  and  not  in  a  landscape  park. 

*  See  later  in  this  chapter. 


LANDSCAPE    PARKS 307 

Sports  like  baseball,  cricket,  and  football  are  much  in  the  same  cate- 
gory as  golf  :  they  might  be  allowed  in  the  open  turf  area  of  a  landscape 
park  if  that  area  could  be  closed  to  other  activities  during  the  time  with- 
out noticeable  inconvenience,  but  if  provision  for  match  games  is  to 
be  made,  with  grandstands,  and  noisily  enthusiastic  crowds  are  to  be 
expected,  these  recreations  also  are  more  properly  provided  for  in  the 
playfield. 

A  certain  amount  of  unorganized  play  by  smaller  children  is  practi- 
cally unobjectionable  in  a  landscape  park,  and  arrangements  for  Alay 
Day  festivals  and  the  like  are  very  desirable,  but  any  organized  pro- 
vision for  apparatus  play  in  a  landscape  park  is  made  at  a  sacrifice  both 
to  the  playground  and  to  the  park.*  A  playground  is  most  effective 
when  the  children  who  use  it  can  all  come  from  a  short  distance.  If  it 
is  in  a  park  or  on  the  side  of  a  park,  it  is  evident  that  its  tributary  area 
lies  almost  wholly  on  one  side  of  it  and  the  average  distance  which  its 
users  must  come  is  doubled.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the  park,  a 
playground  with  apparatus  is  an  utterly  incongruous  object  in  the 
landscape.  Even  if  it  be  assigned  a  separate  area,  and  even  if  when 
this  area  is  set  aside  there  remains  sufficient  area  for  legitimate 
park  purposes,  still  the  noise  of  the  children  playing  would  be  un- 
objectionable only  in  an  adjacent  zoological  garden  or  promenade, 
and  would  distinctly  decrease  the  restful  effect  of  an  adjacent  landscape 
park  unit. 

There  are  a  number  of  other  recreational  activities  occasionally 
found  in  parks,  such  as  merr>'-go-rounds,  roller-coasters,  shooting  gal- 
leries. Punch  and  Judy  shows,  and  so  on,  which,  while  they  provide  a 
perfectly  legitimate  form  of  recreation,  still  are  not  congruous  with  the 
purpose  of  a  landscape  park,  because  their  whole  suggestion  is  of  crowds 
and  the  kind  of  excitement  to  be  found  in  crowds.  These  "commercial 
recreations"  belong  properly  in  an  amusement  park  which  might  per- 
haps be  near  the  landscape  park  but  not  of  it.  It  is  an  argument  in 
favor  of  having  such  recreations  as  these  near  a  landscape  park  and  of 
having  such  provisions  as  a  promenade  and  a  zoological  garden  occupy 

*  See  the  paper  by  F.  L.  Olmsted,  Jr.,  Playgrounds  in  Parks  from  the  Designer's 
Standpoint,  read  before  the  American  Association  of  Park  Superintendents.  (See 
References.) 


3o8 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

an  area  on  the  city  side  of  a  landscape  park,  that  people  come  to  seek 
these  amusements  and  then  enjoy  the  freedom  of  the  landscape  park, 
who  would  not  seek  the  park  for  itself  alone,  and  that  each  recreation 
makes  the  other  more  effective.  It  should  go  without  saying,  however, 
that  the  landscape  park  serves  a  purpose  which  nothing  else  can  serve, 
and  no  argument  in  favor  of  the  juxtaposition  or  incorporation  of  these 
incongruous  recreational  facilities  can  justify  their  inflicting  any  con- 
siderable injury  on  the  landscape  park.* 
Access  and  The  road  and  path  sj'stem  of  the  park  should  be  related  to  the  street 

Entrances  system  of  the  city  to  the  extent  that  the  main  entrances  to  the  park 

should  communicate  with  the  readiest  ways  of  travel  from  the  heart 
of  the  town.  Often  those  who  use  the  paths  in  the  park  come  to  the 
park  by  electric  car,  and  the  path  entrances  and  circulation  are  arranged 
for  convenience  in  this  regard.  The  main  park  road  should  enter  the 
park  at  the  point  most  convenient  of  access  from  the  town,  commonly 
where  the  parkway  from  the  town  reaches  the  park.  A  continuation  of 
the  ordinary  city  streets  into  or  through  the  park  is  undesirable,  how- 
ever, for  the  sake  of  the  efficiency  of  the  park.  Any  landscape  park 
which  serves  its  primary  purpose  well  will  almost  inevitably  entail 
some  inconvenience  to  the  ordinary  street  traffic  in  the  neighborhood. 
In  fact  the  pleasure  drives  in  a  park  may  often  be  legitimately  so  de- 
signed that  they  are  intentionally  inconvenient  for  through  traffic,  — 
all  through  traffic,  especially  of  course  commercial  traffic,  being  kept 
to  its  own  segregated  crossing  roads. 

The  subordinate  entrances  to  the  park  should  be  so  arranged  that 
they  throw  their  pleasure  traffic  conveniently  into  the  general  circula- 
tory system  of  the  park  with  the  least  possible  construction  of  unin- 
teresting road  and  at  the  same  time  the  least  possible  opening  up  of 
views  between  the  park  and  the  surrounding  streets.  In  their  relation 
to  the  general  outside  street  system  each  should  serve  its  own  district 
and  be  so  located  that  traffic  can  come  to  it  by  the  most  pleasant  ways 
available  and  without  any  undue  circuitousness. 

If  a  park  forms  a  part  of  a  park  system,  the  entrances  should  be  so 
arranged  that   pleasure  traffic  may  visit  one  park  and  thence  go  to 

*  Cf.  the  article  by  Robert  Wheelwright,  The  Attacks  on  Central  Park,  in  LaJid- 
scape  Architecture,  Oct.  1910,  v.  i,  p.  9-21. 


LANDSCAPE    PARKS  309 

another  without  leaving  unvisited  any  particularly  interesting  stretch 
of  road  and  without  being  obliged  to  traverse  the  same  road  twice. 

The  roads  and  paths  in  a  landscape  park  by  means  of  which  people  Circulation 
on  foot  or  in  carriages  or  automobiles  may  go  through  the  park,  enjoy- 
ing its  beauties  on  the  way  and  being  conveniently  conducted  to  partic- 
ular points  of  interest  and  beauty,  are  usuallj',  from  the  point  of  view 
of  naturalistic  character,  a  necessarj'  evil.  It  is  true  that  if  the  park 
be  made  to  resemble  a  rather  completely  humanized  countryside,  the 
roads  and  paths  may  at  least  theoretically  be  given  much  of  the  beauty 
of  English  lanes  and  by-paths,  if  the  traffic  to  be  handled  be  not  too 
heavy^  and  such  a  landscape  might  be  very  beautiful  and  serve  well 
its  purpose  of  one  kind  of  a  country  park.  Very  frequently,  however, 
the  landscape  character  in  the  park  is  a  wilder  and  more  natural  thing 
than  this,  perhaps  because  it  is  what  the  site  offers,  perhaps  because 
the  designer  feels  that  this  character  is  more  interesting  and  more  dif- 
ferent from  the  city.  In  this  case  certainly  the  principal  recommenda- 
tion of  the  roads  is  their  practical  necessity.  The  park  roads  should 
allow  of  driving  in  a  circuit,  —  if  the  park  is  large,  perhaps  in  several 
circuits  large  and  small,  different  in  the  views  that  they  command. 
The  various  scenes  which  are  to  be  displayed  to  the  visitor  by  auto- 
mobile should  be  revealed  to  him  to  good  advantage  and  in  pleasing 
succession,  that  their  characters  may  enhance  one  another.  The  cir- 
cuit drive  should  of  course  be  far  enough  within  the  park  to  allow  of  a 
sufficient  screen  between  the  drive  and  the  outside  city :  the  drive 
should  be  in  the  park,  that  is,  not  between  the  park  and  the  town. 
To  some  degree,  an  increase  in  the  length  of  the  road  merely  to  give  a 
greater  duration  to  the  pleasure  of  the  traveler,  and  to  make  the  extent 
of  the  park  seem  greater  is  legitimate ;  but  any  addition  to  the  length 
of  the  road  is  by  so  much  a  diminution  of  the  area  of  the  park  itself 
for  those  for  whom  the  park  may  be  said  to  be  primarily  designed,  those 
who  enjoy  it  on  foot. 

Theoretically  at  least  the  only  wheeled  traffic,  except  service  traffic  Roads 
for  the  park  itself,  which  should  be  allowed  upon  park  roads,  is  pleas- 
ure traffic,  people  proceeding  at  a  leisurely  rate  to  enjoy  the  fresh  air 
and  the  beauties  of  the  park.     General  service  and  commercial  traffic 
should  go  around  the  park  if  this  be  possible  ;  if  not,  certain  cross  roads 


3IO  LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

for  traffic  should  be  arranged,  doing  as  little  damage  to  the  landscape 
as  may  be  and  crossing  the  park  roads  as  few  times  as  can  be  managed, 
preferably  passing  under  them  so  that  the  two  types  of  traffic  are  entirely 
separated.     Rapid  traveling  by  automobile,  primarily  for  the  pleasure 
of  smooth  and  fast  motion,  is  not  one  of  the  recreations  which  can  be 
efficiently  offered  by  a  landscape  park  of  any  ordinary  size.     A  park 
may  lie  at  one  side  of  a  pleasure  boulevard  for  speed  traffic  and  the 
large  views  of  the  park  may  be  enjoyed  as  far  as  this  is  possible  by  the 
passing  automobile  travelers  ;   but  the  intersection  of  such  a  speedway 
with  the  park  roads  is  dangerous  to  the  traffic  on  both  roads,  and  the 
noise  and  dust  of  the  speedway  and  Its  suggestion  of  hurry  and  tension 
are  destructive  of  the  sense  of  quiet  of  the  park.     The  speed  limit  for 
automobiles  using  the  park  roads  themselves  should  be  set  so  low  that 
foot  passengers  can  cross  the  road  without  any  great  feeling  of  hurry 
or  danger.     Such  regulations  will  allow  the  park  roads  to  be  made 
somewhat  narrower  and  with  somewhat  sharper  curves  than  they  other- 
wise might  be,  thus  materially  lessening  their  conspicuousness  and  the 
damage  which  their  necessary  grading  may  do  to  the  natural  ground 
surface.     It  is  of  course  desirable  in  almost  every  park,  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  service  of  the  park  to  all  the  public,  that  some  of  the  park 
roads  at  least  should  be  open  to  pleasure  traffic  by  automobile,  and  these 
roads  should  be  so  designed  that  this  traffic  under  proper  speed  regu- 
lations shall  be  pleasurable,  that  is,  that  the  gradients  shall  be  easy, 
the  turns  ample  and  safe,  and  the  views  obtained  from  the  road  inter- 
esting.    On  the  other  hand,  the  automobile  owner  has  at  his  command, 
and  will  have  for  many  years  to  come,  a  great  deal  of  rural  beauty  not 
in  parks  which  is   inaccessible  to  the  city-dwelling  pedestrian.     The 
pleasure  roads  in  parks,  therefore,  should  not  too  much  encroach  on 
the  enjoyment  of  park  scenery  by  the  pedestrian,  and  if  a  choice  must 
be  made  between  the  two  uses,  it  Is  usually  fairer  to  the  community  as 
a  whole  to  make  this  choice  In  favor  of  the  uninterrupted  character 
of  the  park  itself,  that  is,  in  effect  in  favor  of  the  pedestrian.     While 
the  speedway  has  and  must  have  the  self-assertive  unity  of  wide-swing- 
ing curve  and  clean  straight,  the  good  park  road  —  at  least  in  topog- 
raphy that  is  at  all    uneven  —  may  be  irregular  in  curvature,  shrub- 
grown  at  the  edges,  somewhat  steeper  in  gradient,  slightly  rough  and 


LANDSCAPE    PARKS 311 

inconspicuous  in  surface,  sunk  below  the  surrounding  surface  in  places 
to  avoid  interruption  of  a  view,  even  slightly  irregular  in  width  if  thereby 
it  might  carry  its  traffic  to  the  points  intended  with  less  interruption 
of  the  natural  character  of  the  landscape. 

Park  roads  will  naturally  lie  for  the  most  part  in  the  wooded  areas  or 
running  along  their  outskirts,  alternately  commanding  a  view  from  a 
bay  of  foliage,  or  again  passing  through  a  shady  promontory  of  the 
woods.  The  road  may  be  shaded  by  trees  regularly  spaced  along  it, 
if  it  be  desirable  to  introduce  so  obviously  man-made  an  element  into 
the  design.  In  any  case  the  roads  will  tend  to  lie  between  different 
separate  units  of  the  park.  It  is  often  desirable  that  the  road  should 
not  command  at  the  same  time  views  into  the  separate  units  on  its 
two  sides.  This  is  of  course  the  case  where  the  characters  of  the  two 
units  are  incongruous,  as  for  instance  where  the  low-lying  land  in  one 
unit  might  betray  the  fact  that  a  lake  in  the  other  unit  was  held  at  its 
level  by  artificial  means. 

Bridle  paths  in  parks  are  commonly  so  intensively  used  that  they  Bridle  Paths 
cannot  be  treated  simply  as  certain  portions  of  forest  or  meadow  which 
may  be  traversed  by  riders,  but  must  be  definitely  laid  out  and  surfaced. 
Nevertheless  the  softer  surface  of  gravel  or  tan  bark  may  be  made  in- 
conspicuous, and  as  the  restrictions  of  gradient  and  sharpness  of  turn 
are  by  no  means  so  great  as  they  are  with  roads,  and  as  a  bridle  path 
need  not  necessarily  be  very  wide,  the  bridle  path  can  go,  without  ma- 
terial damage  to  the  landscape,  into  places  where  a  road  would  be 
impossible.  Like  a  road,  the  bridle  path  should  form  a  circuit  or  series 
of  circuits  and  should  offer  to  the  view  of  the  rider  an  effective  series 
of  different  landscapes.  It  should  cross  the  roads  and  footpaths  as 
few  times  as  possible,  and  where  these  crossings  occur,  the  planting 
and  grading  should  be  so  managed  that  one  kind  of  traffic  is  not  thrown 
into  the  course  of  another  suddenly  and  from  behind  a  screen. 

Wheel  traffic  must  perforce  remain  upon  the  road  ;  riding  traffic  can  Footpaths 
usually  be  without  much  difficulty  practically  confined  to  the  bridle 
paths  and  roads ;  but  with  foot  traffic  there  is  always  a  danger  that  it 
will  leave  the  paths  for  some  other  route,  unless  everywhere  along  the 
paths  it  is  easier  or  pleasanter  to  follow  the  path  rather  than  to  traverse 
the  park  along  some  line  not  contemplated  by  the  design.     If  the  foot 


312 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

traffic  is  not  too  great  and  this  general  wandering  over  the  surface  of 
the  park  does  not  prove  too  destructive  to  the  park  beauty,  it  would 
be  more  pleasant  to  many  active  people  than  walking  upon  the  paths, 
and  should  certainly  be  encouraged.  As  the  intensity  of  the  use  of 
the  park  increases,  however,  there  will  come  a  time  when  foot  traffic 
will  have  to  be  confined  to  the  paths  if  any  landscape  beauty  is  to  remain 
to  be  enjoyed. 

The  natural  tendency  of  people  to  follow  a  path  when  it  is  pleasant, 
and  to  follow  any  path  on  the  assumption  that  it  leads  to  some  sufficient 
goal,  should  be  taken  advantage  of  in  a  landscape  park  by  such  arrange- 
ments of  paths  that  people  are  induced  by  them  to  go  to  the  best  points 
of  view  and  to  approach  these  by  the  most  desirable  way. 

In  irregular  landscape  and  particularly  in  woods,  it  is  often  possible 
to  make  a  footpath  little  more  than  a  convenient  way  of  walking  from 
one  place  to  another  without  any  particular  preparation  of  the  surface 
of  the  ground  other  than  the  removal  of  any  obstructing  vegetation. 
Even  when  the  traffic  is  considerable,  it  may  be  possible  to  use  gravel 
or  pebbles  or  even  pine-needles  or  leaves  or  tan  bark  to  prevent  the 
ground  from  becoming  dusty  or  muddy,  still  not  producing  a  definite 
line  of  path  which  will  tell  for  itself  as  an  element  in  the  design.  In 
a  flat  or  gently  undulating  topography,  however,  and  particularly , in _, 
open  country,  if  any  considerable  amount  of  traffic  is  to  be  provided 
for,  the  paths  must  be  definitely  surfaced,  and  if  any  very  large  ex- 
tent of  paths  is  seen  at  the  same  time^t-heir-shapes  as  elements  in 
the  design  should  be  studied.  There  will  be  four  considerations  which 
particularly  affect  their  appearance  :  the  pattern  which  they  make 
together  with  the  plots  of  turf  or  shrubbery  at  their  sides,  the  beauty 
of  their  own  curves  considered  purely  as  decorative  flow  of  line,  the 
adaptation  of  these  curves  to  the  needs  of  traffic,  and  the  fitting  of  the 
lines  and  gradients  of  the  walks  to  the  topography.  Any  path,  even 
a  pleasure  path,  in  a  park  should  seem  to  lead  somewhere  or  at  any  rate 
to  make  a  circuit  by  a  way  chosen  as  the  best.  A  path  which  wanders 
about  with  no  discernible  reason  is  an  annoyance  for  every  passer. 
When  one  path  diverges  from  another,  therefore,  it  should  carry  its 
line  of  traffic  off  in  a  smooth  sweep,  or  if  it  breaks  sharply  away  from 
the  other  path,  there  should  be  some  obstruction  or  some  attraction 


LANDSCAPE     PARKS  313 

as  a  reason  for  its  doing  so.  Especially  in  a  park,  where  short-cutting 
is  so  destructive  of  landscape  beauty,  a  path  should  go  towards  its  goal 
by  the  easiest  way,  or  if  it  does  not  actually  do  so,  sufficient  reasonable 
obstructions  should  be  introduced  to  give  it  this  appearance. 

Beauty  of  curve  of  path,  although  it  is  decorative  and  seductive 
upon  the  landscape  plan,  is  a  beauty  to  be  sought  only  rarely  in  a  land- 
scape park.  Like  the  flowing  curve  of  the  road,  it  emphasizes  the 
unity  of  a  man-made  thing  and  is  therefore  by  so  much  incongruous 
with  naturalistic  landscape  character.  Moreover  in  a  wooded  park 
the  sequential  relation  of  comparatively  distant  parts  of  the  same  curve 
which  makes  their  beauty  on  plan  often  cannot  be  perceived  in  reality. 
(See  Plate  34.)  Again,  in  an  irregular  topography  decorative  flow  of 
curve  of  path  can  seldom  be  obtained  without  some  further  sacrifice 
of  the  closeness  of  the  fitting  of  the  path  to  the  topography.  If  beauty 
of  curve  can  be  produced  without  this  sacrifice  the  only  argument  against 
it  is  the  greater  conspicuousness  it  gives  the  path,  and  an  argument  in 
its  favor  would  be  the  apparently  somewhat  greater  consistency  of 
direction  of  traffic  over  it,  although  this  last  efl^ect  would  probably 
be  sufficiently  produced  by  a  smooth  curve  even  if  it  were  not  neces- 
sarily a  decorative  curve  on  plan.  In  a  level  park,  largely  open  and 
intensively  used,  where  the  materials  of  the  design  are  roads,  paths, 
trees,  shrubs,  and  turf,  and  where  perhaps  the  paths  cannot  escape  far 
from  the  influence  of  the  roads,  —  or  in  other  words  where  no  better 
beauty  may  be  obtained,  —  this  beauty  of  sequential  path  curvature 
may  be  legitimately  sought.     (See  Plate  31.) 

Roads,  bridle  paths,  and  footpaths  in  a  park*  may  be  run  parallel  Interrelation  of 
to  each  other,  for  instance  where  they  pass  through  a  narrow  screen  of  p^'^f^  ""'^ 
woods  between  one  open  unit  and  another,  or  where  they  must  all  pass 
through  a  narrow  valley,  but  since  the  bridle  path  can  go  where  the 
road  cannot,  and  the  footpath  can  go  where  the  bridle  path  cannot, 
much  parallelism  of  these  different  ways  is  a  waste  of  opportunity. 
Where  they  do  run  parallel  it  is  still  possible  to  separate  them  by  trees 
and  shrubs  so  that  the  noise  and  possible  dust  of  the  roads  are  made  as 
little  annoying  as  may  be  to  those  using  the  footpaths.  Running  a 
footpath  alongside  a  road  as  a  sidewalk  is  almost  never  advisable  in 
*  For  materials  for  roads  and  paths  see  Chapter  X,  p.  227. 


3H 


LANDSCAPE     DESIGN 


a  country  park.  It  is  commonly  best  to  have  the  scheme  of  circu- 
lation of  a  landscape  park  consist  of  a  road  system  of  easy  gradient 
and  ample  curve,  making  a  circuit  or  series  of  circuits  in  the  park, 
displaying  but  not  interrupting  the  larger  landscape  units ;  a  bridle 
path  system  (where  this  exists  at  all),  making  a  number  of  interesting 
circuits  perhaps  especially  through  the  more  rugged  and  wooded  parts, 
but  not  unduly  cutting  up  the  wilder  portions  of  fhe  park ;  and  a  path 
system,  accommodating  foot  traffic  throughout  the  park,  but  as  its 
special  function  giving  access  to  those  areas  of  more  sequestered  effect 
and  smaller  scale  which  would  be  particularly  injured  by  the  introduc- 
tion of  roads  and  bridle  paths. 
Buildings  In  determining  what  buildings  should  be  constructed  in  a  landscape 

Properly  park,  the  public  should  bear  in  mind  the  obvious  and  fundamental 

Uses  consideration  :    the  purpose  for  which  the  park  was  created.     Though 

a  park  may  look  like  wild  land,  it  is  not,  for  that,  waste  land  to  be  de- 
voted piecemeal  to  any  use  which  is  in  itself  desirable.  Landscape 
parks  have  been  set  aside  by  our  cities  at  great  expense  to  serve  a  definite 
recreational  purpose,  and  all  the  experience  of  our  cities  goes  to  show 
that  the  service  of  the  parks  is  well  worth  this  expense  ;  but  this  service 
can  be  rendered  only  so  long  as  they  retain  their  character  as  landscape 
parks.  The  introduction  of  buildings  into  them,  therefore,  is  undesir- 
able except  such  structures  as  shall  serve  the  legitimate  purposes  of 
the  park,  and  which  therefore  must  be  built  for  the  sake  of  the  park 
as  a  whole.  The  construction  of  a  schoolhouse  in  a  landscape  park, 
on  the  ground  that  the  park  gives  light,  air,  and  opportunity  for  play 
for  the  children,  the  construction  of  a  public  building  in  a  park  on  the 
ground  that  the  park  makes  an  admirable  setting  for  the  architecture, 
is  a  piece  of  short-sighted  folly  in  the  utilization  of  public  property.* 

There  must  be  proper  provision  for  the  upkeep  of  the  park,  proper 
place  for  the  storage  of  tools  and  vehicles,  and  the  housing  of  work 
horses.  It  is  usually  desirable  that  some  one  in  direct  authority  over 
workmen  should  live  near  these  service  buildings,  and  often  that  some  of 

*  See  the  paper  by  Frank  Miles  Day,  The  Location  of  Public  Buildings  in  Parks 
and  other  Open  Spaces,  with  discussion,  in  Proceedings  of  National  Conference  on  City 
Planning,  191 1,  p.  53-79-  Also  see  the  article  by  Robert  Wheelwright  referred  to 
in  footnote  on  p.  308. 


LANDSCAPE     PARKS  315 

the  workmen  themselves  should  be  accommodated  near  by.  This 
often  results  in  the  construction  of  the  service  buildings  and  living 
quarters  in  a  group,  which  should  be  concealed  from  the  park  but  should 
be  convenient  of  access  both  from  within  and  without  the  park.  Some 
park  service  buildings  are  best  located  elsewhere  than  near  this  group, 
for  instance,  the  sheepfold  may  be  built  near  the  meadow  where  the 
sheep  are  accustomed  to  feed. 

It  may  be  necessary  to  have  some  comfort  stations  where  there  are 
no  other  buildings.  These  should  be  concealed,  but  should  have  plain 
signs  designating  their  location,  and  they  should  be  conveniently  placed, 
near  those  areas  where  the  largest  number  of  people  congregate.  Often 
these  conveniences  form  a  part  of  a  structure  devoted  to  some  other 
use,  like  a  boathouse  or  a  restaurant ;  and  in  modern  parks  they  are 
often  combined  with  rooms,  perhaps  with  an  attendant  in  charge,  to 
form  a  rest  house  which  may  be  architecturally  attractive  and  need  not 
be  entirely  concealed. 

A  picnic  grove  may  well  have  a  restaurant  where  simple  meals  may 
be  obtained  or  food  bought  to  be  eaten  in  the  grove.  In  connection 
with  the  promenade  or  zoological  garden  which  might  occupy  a  portion 
of  the  park  set  apart  near  the  entrance,  there  might  be  a  more  preten- 
tious restaurant,  perhaps  facing  upon  the  promenade  on  one  side,  and 
on  the  other  facing  a  long  view  across  the  park.  If  the  boating  is  an 
important  feature  so  that  crowds  come  to  the  boathouse,  the  main  res- 
taurant may  be  combined  with  this  structure.  If  concerts  are  given  in 
the  park,  they  are  probably  best  arranged  for  in  connection  with 
the  promenade  if  such  an  area  exists,  in  which  case  the  musicians  may 
occupy  a  part  of  the  main  restaurant  shelter  or  there  may  be  a  separate 
bandstand  constructed. 

Special  sports  and  games  may  each  have  its  own  shelter,  but  usually 
the  park  can  be  so  arranged  that  several  are  served  by  one  structure, 
containing  lockers,  showers,  and  having  some  caretaker  in  charge  who 
furnishes  small  necessities  for  the  various  games  and  perhaps  light 
refreshments.  These  field  houses  may  be  designed  to  serve  both  summer 
and  winter  sports,  the  boathouses  serving  the  skaters  and  perhaps 
the  golf  house  or  the  tennis  house  serving  those  using  toboggans  and 
snowshoes. 


Buildings  in 
Relation  to  the 
Park  Land- 
scape 


Minor  Struc- 
tures:  Park 
Furniture 


Important  viewpoints  in  a  park  may  be  marked  by  shelters,  which 
not  only  give  a  comfortable  place  from  which  the  view  may  be  enjoyed, 
but  serve  as  a  definite  goal  for  a  walk,  a  definite  marking  of  the  place 
from  which  the  view  is  best,  and  give  perhaps  an  added  interest  to  a 
high  point  which  would  otherwise  not  be  sufficiently  dominant  in  the 


view. 


Any  of  these  shelters  may  serve  as  a  refuge  in  case  of  rain  and  some- 
times where  there  are  no  buildings  for  other  purposes,  shelters  may  be 
constructed  for  this  use  alone. 

The  smaller  necessary  buildings  in  a  landscape  park  may  be,  and 
usually  should  be,  more  or  less  concealed.  The  larger  buildings,  res- 
taurants, overlook  shelters,  boathouses  and  so  on,  should  be  so  set  and 
enframed  as  not  to  be  unduly  conspicuous,  and  by  choice  of  material 
and  color  and  even,  within  limits,  by  modification  of  their  form,  they 
may  be  made  more  harmonious  with  the  landscape.*  In  a  park  more 
than  in  some  other  situations,  the  form  of  a  building  may  be  legiti- 
mately modified  to  make  it  better  fit  the  landscape  composition,  because 
the  landscape  beauty  is  a  primary  purpose  of  the  design  (see  Plate 
35),  but  even  here  it  is  seldom  desirable  to  sacrifice  architectural  form 
and  reasonable  fitness  to  use  by  adopting  curved  and  irregular  shapes 
for  the  sake  of  making  the  building  inconspicuous  in  the  landscape. 

The  various  minor  constructions  in  a  park,  like  seats,  drinking 
fountains,  light  standards,  and  guide  signs  are  subject  in  their  way  to 
the  same  considerations  which  we  have  already  discussed  in  relation  to 
the  larger  architectural  structures.  They  should  not  be  unduly  con- 
spicuous so  that  they  introduce  any  unnecessary  incongruity  into  the 
landscape  character.  They  should,  however,  be  eflfective  for  their  own 
purposes.  Seats  and  drinking  fountains  may  be  made  very  inconspic- 
uous, often  resembling  natural  bowlders,  without  being  less  useful. 
A  drinking  fountain,  however,  like  a  statue,  may  be  used  as  an  object  of 
esthetic  importance  in  the  design,  —  it  may  be  adorned  with  sculpture,  or 
at  least  bear  an  inscription  and  perhaps  serve  as  a  memorial.  Similarly 
a  seat  may  be  treated  as  an  exedra  at  the  end  of  a  vista,  formal  or 
informal,  and  given  considerable  importance  in  the  general  composition, 
or  a  number  of  seats  may  mark  definite  points  in  a  formal  concert 

*Cf.  Chapter  X,  p.  189. 


grove  or  similar  area  ;  but  usually  a  seat  in  a  park  is  better  made  incon- 
spicuous. With  lights  and  signs,  however,  this  is  not  so  much  the  case, 
since,  in  a  way,  their  use  is  to  be  conspicuous.  Lights  are  not  efficient 
if  they  are  much  concealed  among  foliage.  Sometimes  the  lights  may 
be  attached  by  brackets  to  trees,  or  the  light-standards  may  be  rough 
natural  posts,  but  more  commonly  the  light-standards  must  frankly 
serve  their  own  purposes.  Under  these  circumstances  the  best  arrange- 
ment is  to  have  the  light  supported  by  a  well-designed  simple  staff  of 
iron  or  wood,  placed  where  it  illuminates  the  greatest  area,  and  perhaps 
marks  the  turn  of  a  path  or  the  edge  of  a  road.  It  should  still  be  possible, 
however,  to  arrange  these  light-standards  so  that  by  day  they  are  not 
unpleasantly  silhouetted  against  the  skyline  in  an  otherwise  natu- 
ralistic landscape,  nor  obtrusive  in  any  important  views.  The  signs 
pointing  out  the  way  and  perhaps  calling  attention  to  special  features 
of  interest  must  be  legible  if  the}^  are  to  be  useful.  Moreover  they 
occur  in  connection  with  roads  and  paths  and  not  elsewhere  in  the  park, 
so  it  is  the  more  reasonable  to  make  them  frankly  man-made  objects. 
It  is  sometimes  possible  to  have  a  sign  cut  upon  a  bowlder  or  painted 
on  a  rough  board  hung  from  a  tree,  and  where  everything  else  is  in 
scale  with  it,  this  amount  of  respect  for  the  landscape  character  may  be 
desirable.  Irregular  boards  with  rustic  lettering  are  seldom  effective, 
however,  and  it  is  usually  best  to  have  a  simple  straight  standard  bearing 
a  simply  lettered  sign,  the  whole  painted  inconspicuously  green  or  brown 
and  the  lettering  white  rather  than  black,  for  legibility.  It  might  be 
remarked  that  where  the  distances  are  at  all  considerable  it  is  a  great 
comfort  to  the  visiting  sight-seer  to  be  told  not  only  the  way  to  his 
objective,  but  how  far  he  must  go. 

Sculpture  in  a  landscape  park,  purely  for  its  decorative  effect,  may 
find  a  place  in  the  formal  arrangements  of  the  promenade  near  the  en- 
trance, but  it  may  also  be  used  successfully  in  the  landscape  park  itself, 
especially  where  this  is  considerably  humanized  and  makes  no  great 
attempt  actually  to  imitate  wild  nature.  Again,  the  test  of  excellence 
of  the  introduced  object  is  its  congruity  with  the  general  character  of 
the  park.  Its  appearance  and,  in  this  case,  its  significance  and 
suggestion  must  be  studied  with  this  in  mind.* 

*  Ci.  Chapter  X,  p.  211. 


3i8 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Park  Bound- 
aries and 
Gates 


Municipal  and 
Metropolitan 
Landscape 
Reservations 


It  is  practically  impossible  so  to  inclose  a  park  that  an  active  person 
may  not  get  in  almost  wherever  he  chooses.  Nevertheless  it  is  desir- 
able that  there  should  be  a  definite  boundarj^  around  the  park,  and,  if 
the  city  presses  close  upon  the  park,  that  this  boundary  should  be  diffi- 
cult to  pass  except  at  designated  entrances.  The  typical  treatment  of 
the  boundaries  of  our  parks  is  a  wall  or  fence  and  within  it  a  boundary 
plantation.  Reasonable  economy  as  well  as  expression  of  the  purpose 
of  the  park  would  dictate  that  this  wall  or  fence  should  be  permanent, 
but  not  ornate.  A  stone,  or  possibly  concrete,  wall  is  therefore  in  many 
cases  the  best  structure  for  the  purpose. 

The  main  entrance  to  a  landscape  park  should  express  the  dignity 
of  the  park  as  an  essential  portion  of  the  city  plan,  but  it  should  also 
suggest  something  of  the  character  of  the  park.  An  elaborate  archi- 
tectural entrance,  owing  its  beauty  largely  to  cut-stone  moldings 
and  sculpture,  is  from  this  point  of  view  hardly  ideal,  except  that  some- 
times it  relates  on  its  outer  side  to  a  formal  plaza  or  the  end  of  a  great 
avenue  and  might  possibly  require  a  certain  elaboration  to  bear  its 
part  in  this  composition.  Usually,  however,  even  here  a  simple  and 
massive  form  would  be  more  effective  and  more  appropriate. 

Almost  all  the  cities  in  this  country  are  growing  in  population, 
many  of  them  at  a  very  rapid  rate ;  and  there  is  at  this  time  no  apparent 
reason  that  this  growth  should  not  continue  for  very  many  years  to  come. 
It  lies  in  the  power  of  the  cities  to  see  that  this  growth  shall  be  organized 
and  directed  so  that  the  various  necessities  of  existence  for  all  the  citizens 
may  be  best  produced  with  least  waste.  Nowhere  may  the  benefits 
of  an  enlightened  and  far-seeing  public  policy  be  more  evident  than  in 
the  case  of  reservations  of  land  for  recreational  and  other  public  pur- 
poses. 

So  long  as  the  large  public  park  remains  upon  the  outskirts  of  the 
city,  it  may  offer  sufficient  freedom  and  openness  to  satisfy  almost  all 
the  people,  and  the  few  who  require  more  than  this  may  be  able  to  find 
it  by  journeying  farther  into  the  still  unspoiled  open  country ;  but  in 
time  the  city  will  grow  around  the  park  ;  and  perhaps  through  the  cutting 
off  of  its  distant  views,  certainly  by  its  more  intensive  use,  the  park  will 
become  more  humanized.  In  the  meantime  the  outlying  country  will 
have  turned  from  woodland  to  farms,   from  farms  to  gardens,   and 


LANDSCAPE     PARKS  319 

from  gardens  to  suburbs.  Such  landscape  beauty  as  remains  will  be  in 
private  hands,  almost  necessarily  closed  to  public  use ;  and  the  more  nat- 
ural beauty  of  the  far  outlying  countr}-  can  be  enjoyed  by  only  the  few 
who  can  afford  to  travel  long  distances  to  reach  it  by  train  or  automobile. 

Reservation  of  outlying  land  for  public  use,  then,  serves  these 
important  purposes  among  others  :  it  keeps  open  a  freer  and  less 
humanized  kind  of  landscape  beauty  for  those  who  need  it  and  who  are 
willing  to  go  farther  out  than  the  landscape  park  to  find  it,  —  a  kind  of 
beauty  which  otherwise,  if  it  were  preserved  at  all,  would  be  in  private 
hands  and  closed  to  the  public ;  and  it  assures  the  preservation  of  such 
beauty,  which  would  be  almost  necessarily  diminished,  altered,  or 
utterly  destroyed  under  the  pressure  of  growing  intensity  of  use  and 
rising  land  values.  When  properly  done  with  due  regard  to  main 
lines  of  traffic  and  the  adaptability  of  different  areas  to  different 
economic  purposes,  it  helps  to  stabilize  land  values,  to  fix  the  character 
of  neighborhoods,  and  generally  to  direct  the  future  growth  of  the 
community  in  the  way  that  it  should  go. 

It  is  possible,  and  it  should  be  considered  with  every-  city,  that  the 
present  reservation  may  at  some  future  time  be  the  city-surrounded 
landscape  park,  and  that  another  reservation  may  be  needed  still 
farther  afield ;  but  since  each  concentric  ring  of  growth  of  a  city  means 
a  greater  and  greater  added  area  proportionally  to  the  added  radius, 
such  a  change  in  reservations  lying  some  miles  beyond  the  present  out- 
skirts of  the  town  is  probably  very  far  in  the  future.  It  is  fortunate 
that  the  very  characters  of  landscape  which  render  it  best  suited  for 
use  as  landscape  reservation,  and  perhaps  subsequently  as  a  landscape 
park,  are  likely  to  be  those  which  render  it  least  suited  for  the  ordinary 
economic  development.  Uneven,  rocky,  and  broken  ground,  ground 
heavily  wooded,  countrj'  with  many  streams  and  ponds,  may  count 
all  these  as  assets  if  it  is  to  be  used  for  recreation,  but  they  are  all  causes 
of  expense  if  the  land  is  to  be  intensively  developed  for  residential, 
commercial,  or  industrial  purposes.  It  is  therefore  usually  possible 
in  a  broad  way  to  determine  where  the  main  lines  of  traffic  shall  lie 
and  what  the  uses  of  the  different  regions  shall  be  *  and  to  set  aside  the 
recreation  areas  in  accordance  with  such  a  general  scheme  with  con- 

*  Cf.  Districting. 


320 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

siderable  certainty,  even  although  the  planning  be  far  in  advance  of 
present  need.  As  a  matter  of  general  public  policy,  this  land  should  be 
acquired  as  soon  as  it  is  demonstrable  that  it  will  be  needed  in  the  future, 
because  it  can  be  acquired  more  cheaply  now  than  it  ever  can  be  again, 
and  because  further  developments  upon  it  in  ways  incongruous  with  its 
ultimate  recreational  use  are  almost  certain  to  prove  a  destruction 
or  postponement  of  landscape  beauty,  and,  since  they  must  later  be 
removed,  an  uneconomical  application  of  enterprise. 

It  is  not  at  all  necessary  or  indeed  desirable  that  any  great  expense  be 
undertaken  at  once  for  the  development  of  these  outlying  reserved 
areas,  except  such  as  may  be  necessary  to  preserve  the  beauty  they 
have,  to  render  them  reasonably  accessible,  to  police  them  adequately, 
and  to  do  such  planting  as  may  profitably  be  undertaken  at  once  with 
a  view  to  their  appearance  perhaps  fifty  years  hence.  In  some  cases, 
^  indeed,  while  holding  the  land  in  fee,  it  may  be  wise  for  the  municipal- 

ity not  to  remove  the  land  from  its  present  use,  but  to  allow  it  to  con- 
tinue perhaps  as  farm  land,  meadow,  and  pasturage,  as  orchard,  or  even 
as  commercial  woodland,  with  the  legal  proviso  that  nothing  shall  be 
done  by  its  present  tenants  seriously  detrimental  to  its  future  use. 
Occasionally  the  environs  of  a  city  may  be  so  little  distinctive  in  land- 
^  scape  character  that  practically  whatever  beauty  is  to  be  enjoyed  by 

future  generations  must  be  created ;  or  it  may  be  that  already  certain 
economic  use  of  the  land  to  be  set  aside  for  recreation  has  so  thoroughly 
destroyed  previously  existing  beauty,  in  places,  that  no  enjoyment  of  it 
as  a  whole  is  possible  until  these  places  have  been  restored.  In  either  case 
early  acquisition  of  the  land  would  be  advisable,  that  planting  for  the 
benefit  of  future  generations  should  be  undertaken  without  delay. 
Combination  There  are  other  purposes  besides  recreation  for  which  the  city  must 

^rlty  have  such  outlying  reservations.     The  time  is  rapidly  coming  when  we 

must  grow  our  timber  as  we  grow  our  corn,  definitely  as  a  commercial 
crop ;  but  this  can  be  economically  done  only  at  a  large  scale,  and  the 
broad  areas  of  woodland  so  created  offer  too  good  an  opportunity  for 
public  recreation  to  be  allowed  to  remain  in  private  hands  or  not  to  be 
combined  with  public  reservations  for  recreational  purposes.* 

*  Cf.  the  discussion  of  municipal  forest  reservations  as  an  example  of  landscape 
characters  in  relation  to  economic  use  and  maintenance,  Chapter  V,  p.  72. 


Uses 


LANDSCAPE    PARKS  321 

Again,  where  a  city  gets  its  water  supply  from  a  lake  or  river,  the 
watershed  tributary  to  this  must  be  protected  from  pollution,  that  is, 
it  should  not  be  used  for  residential,  commercial,  or  industrial  purposes. 
It  can,  however,  very  well  be  used  as  a  public  forest  and  as  a  public 
recreation  reservation,  and  the  stream  or  pond  which  furnishes  the  public 
water  supply  may  contribute  greatly  also  to  the  beauty  of  the  land- 
scape. 

In  the  preservation  of  natural  scenery  for  public  enjoyment,  it  is  State  and  Na- 
not  possible  for  cities  to  do  all  the  work  that  is  to  be  done.  It  is  true  "°'*'*^  Par^J 
that  since  the  great  bulk  of  the  population  of  cities  seldom  travels  far  f/g^  "^^^'^ 
from  its  own  home,  the  outdoor  recreation  of  its  own  people  is  the  first 
consideration  of  this  kind  for  the  city  to  meet.  There  are  nevertheless 
many  millions  of  the  people  of  the  United  States  who  do  travel,  if  only 
occasionally,  and  who  have  therefore  a  certain  interest  in  the  beauty  of 
the  whole  country  wherever  it  may  be  found.  It  is  right  and  necessary 
that  much  the  larger  portion  of  the  area  of  this  country  shall  be  turned  to 
economic  use  with  only  coordinate  consideration  of  its  beauty ;  but 
there  are  many  areas  the  greatest  service  of  which  to  the  nation  is  that 
they  shall  preserve  and  display  their  present  natural  beauty  for  the 
refreshment  and  inspiration  of  all  future  generations.  In  the  case  of 
such  natural  wonders  as  the  valleys  of  the  Yosemite  or  the  Yellowstone  or 
the  falls  of  Niagara,  it  is  fairly  obvious  that  their  landscape  beauty  is  a 
function  not  to  be  destroyed  by  any  other  use.  (See  Frontispiece  and 
Plates  12,  13,  14,  23,  and  24,  all  of  which  views  were  taken  in  national 
parks  and  reservations.)  There  are  other  classes  of  areas  which  also 
should  be  preserved  and  increased  in  their  beauty,  not  so  much  because 
they  present  a  landscape  character  very  striking  in  itself,  but  rather 
because  in  them  may  be  preserved  a  landscape  character  typical  of  the 
primitive  condition  of  the  country  in  which  they  lie,  and  sure  of  ultimate 
and  utter  destruction  unless  it  is  so  preserved.  Areas  of  these  two  kinds 
are  often  located  not  near  any  city,  and  they  are  usually  too  large  to  be 
possible  of  segregation  and  maintenance  by  any  one  city.  Moreover, 
as  we  have  said,  the  people  not  of  one  city  alone  but  of  the  whole  country 
have  an  interest  and  a  right  in  them  on  account  of  their  distinctive 
character.  Such  areas,  therefore,  are  the  proper  charge  of  the  United 
States  or  of  the  separate  states.     Although  no  hard  and  fast  line  may 


322 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


be  drawn  as  to  which  areas  should  be  administered  by  the  state  *  and 
which  by  the  federal  government,  it  may  be  said  in  general  that  those 
which  preserve  the  unusual,  in  which  all  the  country  may  be  interested, 
may  well  be  under  national  control,  whereas  those  which  preserve  the 
locally  typical  may  well  be  the  property  of  the  state.  In  either  case 
of  course  they  would  be  equally  open  to  any  one  who  might  desire  to 
come  to  them.  These  areas  may  serve  also  as  forest  reserves,  or  at 
least  they  may  form  parts  of,  or  be  contiguous  to,  areas  reserved  for  such 
purposes.  The  proper  uses  of  a  national  park  and  a  national  forest 
being  however  fundamentally  different,!  it  is  probably  advisable,  as 
our  governmental  machinery  is  at  present  organized,  that  though  these 
different  areas  should  be  handled  in  the  closest  cooperation,  they  should 
be  separately  administered. 

The  matter  of  accessibility  of  these  reservations,  as  far  as  it  affects 
their  internal  development,  will  not  be  essentially  different  from  that 
which  we  have  already  discussed  under  the  subject  of  landscape  parks. 
It  should  be  religiously  borne  in  mind  by  whoever  has  charge  of  them  that 
not  for  any  short-sighted  reasons  of  making  them  self-supporting  or 
advertising  their  value  to  the  public  at  large  or  making  all  parts  of  them 
accessible  to  any  one  who  might  seek  them,  should  their  essential  char- 
acteristics be  injured,  or  should  any  policy  be  inaugurated  which  would 
in  the  future  diminish  the  peculiar  landscape  beauty  which  they  alone 
can  furnish  to  the  coming  generations  of  the  nation. 

As  to  their  accessibility  from  without,  it  is  evident  that  they  will  be 
sought  to  a  greater  and  greater  degree  not  only  by  rail  but  especially 
by  automobile,  and  that  therefore  the  relation  of  the  state  parks  to 
state  highways  and  state  parkways,  and  the  relation  of  these  with  the 
national  parks  into  one  great  system  J  providing  for  outdoor  rec- 
reation and  recreational  travel,  is  obviously  a  desirable  thing,  and  one 
which  we  may  hope  to  attain  through  consistent  and  intelligent  effort 
in  the  not  very  distant  future. 

*  Cf.  article  by  H.  A.  Caparn,  Some  Reasons  for  a  General  System  of  State  Parks, 
in  Landscape  Architecture,  Jan.  1917.     (See  References.) 

t  Cf.  paper  by  F.  L.  Olmsted,  Jr.,  The  Distinction  between  National  Parks  and  Na- 
tional Forests,  in  Landscape  Architecture,  Apr.  1916,  v.  6,  p.  114-115. 

%  Cf.  the  address  before  the  American  Civic  Association  by  Cyrus  Kehr,  National 
System  of  Highways  and  Landscape  Designing.     (See  References.) 


LANDSCAPE     PARKS 


323 


Almost  within  the  memory  of  living  men  has  come  the  effective  National 
conception  of  the  city  as  a  complete  organism  which  must  provide  for  Planning 
its  inhabitants  such  things  as  they  cannot  provide  for  themselves  for 
complete  and  efficient  living ;  and  with  this  conception  has  come  the 
realization  of  the  importance  to  the  individual  and  so  to  the  community 
of  beauty,  and  especially  of  outdoor  beauty,  and  the  duty  which  the 
community  has  to  provide  it.  We  are  now  coming  to  see  that  this  same 
conception  of  a  complete  functional  organism  applies  as  well  to  the 
state  and  to  the  nation ;  that  the  lands  of  the  nation  should  be  studied 
as  to  their  various  fitness  to  all  the  purposes  which  lands  may  serve, 
and  then  so  regulated  that  each  may  best  serve  that  purpose,  economic 
or  esthetic,  to  which  in  the  general  national  scheme  it  is  best  fitted.* 

The  complete  organization  of  the  area  of  town  and  city  and  state 
and  nation  which  shall  bring  this  about,  the  wise  administration  which 
shall  make  it  possible,  in  the  face  of  the  dangers  of  public  incompetence 
and  private  greed,  may  be  a  thing  of  the  distant  future,  but  it  is  to 
come.  And  the  greatest  opportunity  for  public  service  which  is  before 
the  landscape  architect  of  to-day  is  that  he  may  bear  his  share,  by  writ- 
ten and  spoken  word  and  by  actually  constructed  example,  in  the  pub- 
lic education  and  the  molding  of  public  opinion,  through  which  alone 
this  good  thing  may  be  brought  about,  and  by  which  in  the  future  it 
must  be  upheld. 

*  Ci.  Le  Probleme  National,  beginning  of  Ch.  X,  in  Louis  van  der  Swaelmen's 
Preliminaires  d'Ari  Civique,  1916.     (See  References. 1 


APPENDIX 

Part  I 

NOTES   ON   THE    PROFESSIONAL   PRACTICE 
OF   LANDSCAPE   ARCHITECTURE   IN  AMERICA 

Professional  conduct — Professional  charges  —  Professional  reputation  —  Ad- 
vertising and  publicity  —  Professional  announcements  —  Public  exhibitions  — 
Competitions  —  Landscape  architect,  client,  and  contractor  —  Coopera- 
tion OF  landscape  architect  with  other  practitioners  —  Cooperation  in 
city  planning  —  Organiz.\tion  and  equipment  of  a  landscape  architect's 
OFFICE  —  Clerical  force  —  Technical  office  and  field  force  —  Office  reference 
material. 

Only  within  recent  years  has  there  been  in  this  country  sufficient 
demand  for  the  services  of  the  trained  landscape  architect  to  make  it 
possible  for  any  considerable  body  of  men  to  carry  on  the  practice  of 
this  profession.  The  American  Society  of  Landscape  Architects  was 
founded  in  1899;  the  first  degree  for  the  accomplishment  of  a  desig- 
nated collegiate  course  in  landscape  architecture  was  granted  in  1901. 
But  now  (1917)  professional  degrees  are  offered  by  at  least  six  institu- 
tions in  the  United  States,  and  the  field  and  scope  of  the  profession  and 
the  technical  knowledge  which  its  practitioners  should  possess  *  are 
being  differentiated  with  considerable  clearness  from  the  tangent  fields 
of  other  professions  like  architecture  and  engineering. 

The  general  principles  of  the  proper  professional  conduct  of  a  land-  Professional 
scape  architect  are  in  effect  the  same  as  those  governing  the  action  of  Conduct 
the  architect,  and  are  not  essentially  different  from  those  relating  to 
the  work  of  the  engineer,  because  they  are  fundamentally  the  prin- 
ciples of  common  honesty  applied  to  the  relations  of  a  man  who  sells 

*  Cf.  Chapter  I,  p.  2. 


326  LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

skilled  advice  to  a  client,  who  directs  for  the  client  the  carrying  out  of 
this  advice,  and  who  serves  as  arbiter  as  to  the  meaning  of  these  direc- 
tions between  the  client  and  the  person  who  does  the  construction.* 

According  to  the  constitution  of  the  American  Society  of  Landscape 
Architects,  "A  landscape  architect,  a  landscape  gardener,  or  a  landscape 
designer,  in  good  standing  is  one  who  practices  the  art  of  arranging  land 
and  landscape  for  use  and  enjoyment,  whose  compensation  is  received 
directly  from  his  client  and  not  directly  or  indirectly  from  labor,  plants, 
or  other  material  used  in  fitting  land  for  use,  or  from  persons  supplying 
the  same."  The  reason  that  it  is  not  advisable  for  the  landscape 
architect  to  be  financially  interested  in  the  sale  of  any  materials  used 
in  the  construction  of  his  designs,  or  to  take  commissions  from  the 
seller  on  any  materials  which  he  orders,  is  of  course  that  he  would 
thereby  be  subjected  to  the  temptation  to  choose  his  materials  not  for 
their  greatest  value  in  the  design  but  for  their  greatest  profit  to  him. 
Although  any  individual  man  might  resist  this  temptation,  all  men 
would  not,  and  every  man  would  be  open  to  suspicion.  Moreover, 
it  is  much  better  that  the  client  should  know  how  much  he  pays  the 
landscape  architect  for  his  advice,  and  so  have  some  idea  whether 
the  service  has  been  worth  the  payment,  rather  than  know  that  an 
indeterminate  part  of  the  landscape  architect's  payment  is  concealed 
in  a  larger  sum  paid  ostensibly  for  another  thing. 
Professional  There  are  various  different  ways,  suited  to  different  circumstances. 

Charges  j^^  which  the  payment  to  the  landscape  architect  may  be  determined. 

He  may  be  paid,  as  the  architect  usually  is,  a  certain  per  cent  of  the 
cost  of  the  work  constructed  in  accordance  with  his  plans,  this  per 
cent  being  greater  if  the  reputation  of  the  designer  is  great,  if  the  work 
is  exceptionally  difficult  and  calls  for  unusual  skill  or  application,  if 
the  work  is  small  in  cost ;  the  per  cent  being  less  if  the  advice  or  plans 
be  not  complete,  or  perhaps  if  the  work  be  not  completely  carried  out, 
so  that  detailed  supervision  for  finished  construction  is  not  called  for. 
It  is  true  that  this  method  of  charge  appears  to  put  before  the  land- 
scape architect  the  temptation  to  increase  the  cost  of  the  work  so  that 
his  own  profits  may  be  increased.  It  is  a  tribute  to  the  profession  of 
landscape  architecture  and  especially  to  the  professions  of  architecture 

*  Cf.  p.  332. 


APPENDIX 327 

and  engineering,  where  this  method  of  charge  is  more  general,  that  on 
the  whole  this  method  has  proved  satisfactor}',  and  that  the  professional 
adviser  has  been  willing  to  spend  much  effort  in  reducing  the  cost  of 
the  construction  although  thereby  his  own  remuneration  is  correspond- 
ingly reduced. 

The  landscape  architect  may  be  paid  a  lump  sum,  determined  be- 
forehand, for  all  his  services  and  expenses  in  relation  to  a  certain  piece 
of  work.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the  client  this  gives  the  advantage 
of  certainty,  but  it  is  likely  to  result  in  the  landscape  architect  being 
underpaid.  It  is  uncertain  just  what  plans  and  directions  and  investi- 
gations will  be  necessar}',  even  when  the  work  to  be  constructed  is 
known  in  advance  with  some  exactness.  If  the  landscape  architect 
estimates  liberally  on  these  uncertainties,  the  payment  which  he  asks 
for  may  seem  too  high.  Moreover,  every  private  client,  as  the  work 
goes  on,  is  very  likely  to  see  more  clearly  what  the  effect  of  the  com- 
pleted design  will  be,  to  become  more  interested  in  it,  and  to  wish  it 
carried  out  more  expensively,  or  added  to  in  various  ways,  and  the 
additional  work  thus  required  of  the  landscape  architect  cannot  easily 
be  estimated  in  advance,  or  later  determined  and  covered  by  an  addi- 
tional charge. 

The  landscape  architect  may  be  paid  a  stated  fee  plus  his  expenses. 
The  fee  is  his  remuneration  for  his  reputation  and  for  his  personal  skill 
and  time  employed  on  the  work  in  question.  The  expenses  are  those 
of  the  landscape  architect  and  of  the  assistants  employed  on  the  work, 
in  the  office  and  in  the  field,  the  expenses  for  materials,  prints,  travel- 
ing, subsistence  charges  when  traveling,  etc.,  and  the  reasonable  share 
which  the  work  should  bear  of  the  general  office  expenses,  like  rent, 
light,  heat,  etc.,  which  cannot  be  directly  charged  to  a  particular  client. 
In  some  offices  these  general  expenses  are  about  equal  to  the  expenses 
for  assistants'  pay ;  but  this  will  depend  of  course  on  the  efficiency  of 
the  office  and  on  whether  the  landscape  architect  himself,  if  he  does 
drafting,  charges  for  his  own  time  as  a  draftsman. 

Some  landscape  architects  make  separate  charges  for  their  services 
during  the  successive  stages  of  the  work,  for  instance :  for  preliminary 
visit ;  preliminary''  and  general  plans  ;  grading  and  construction  plans, 
specifications  and  estimates ;    planting  plans  and  planting  lists,  esti- 


328 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

mating  and  ordering  plants  ;  supervision  of  construction ;  supervision 
of  planting.  This  enables  the  client,  at  any  of  these  designated  stages, 
to  place  the  landscape  architect's  plans  in  the  hands  of  some  one  else 
for  execution  or  to  cease  to  employ  the  landscape  architect  altogether. 
It  enables  the  landscape  architect,  if  he  sets  his  price  for  each  succes- 
sive service  only  when  this  service  is  about  to  begin,  to  estimate  the 
actual  service  required  more  closely.  On  the  other  hand,  it  is  possible 
only  roughly  to  determine  under  which  head  the  professional  assist- 
ance given  should  be  classified.  For  instance,  many  decisions  as  to 
grading  and  planting  must  be  made  in  preparing  the  preliminary  plan. 
In  land  subdivision  work*  it  is  a  frequent  practice  for  the  landscape 
architect  to  fix  his  charge  at  so  much  per  acre  of  land  developed,  for 
certain  specified  plans  and  service.  This  definiteness  is  particularly 
desirable  from  the  client's  point  of  view  in  these  cases,  and  a  landscape 
architect  with  experience  in  such  work  can  determine  rather  closely  in 
advance  what  his  charges  should  be. 

When  the  client  is  willing  to  put  himself  in  the  hands  of  his  land- 
scape architect,  the  charge  may  simply  be  determined  by  the  land- 
scape architect  as  what  seems  fair  when  the  work  is  done.  If  the 
landscape  architect  is  conscientious  and  his  office  is  efficient,  and  no 
misunderstandings  arise,  this  would  be  the  best  way,  but  usually  some 
statement  as  to  probable  charges  will  save  later  embarrassment.  When 
nothing  is  stated  beforehand  the  courts  would  probably  uphold  a 
charge  which  was  shown  to  be  in  accordance  with  the  general  custom 
of  reputable  practitioners  in  such  a  case. 
Professional  Every  landscape  architect  sets  before  himself  the  ideal  of  being 

Reputation  widely  known  as  a  good  practitioner.     The  only  final  firm  basis  on  which 

such  a  reputation  can  rest  is  actual  work  well  done  and  clients  satisfied. 
It  is  evident,  however,  that  the  landscape  architect  must  get  the  work 
to  do  before  he  can  establish  such  a  reputation,  and  this  is  the  greatest 
problem  which  first  confronts  the  young  practitioner.  Anything  which 
he  can  do  without  loss  of  dignity  or  honesty  to  make  himself  known 
and  professionally  respected  is  desirable.  He  may  advertise  in  certain 
acceptable  ways.  He  may  locate  his  office  so  that  it  is  to  be  seen  by 
people  who  might  become  clients,  and  so  that  he  may  mingle  with  such 

*  Cf.  Chapter  XI,  p.  280. 


APPENDIX 329 

people ;  he  may  furnish  his  office  so  that  it  proclaims  him  a  man  of 
taste  and  business  efficiency.  He  may  cultivate  acquaintances,  not 
only  for  the  general  broadening  effect  of  wide  acquaintanceship  but  for 
the  definite  professional  use  which  his  acquaintances  may  be  to  him,  — 
his  fellow  practitioners  through  a  mutual  polishing  of  ideas,  and  people 
in  general  through  their  possibly  becoming  clients.  He  may  lend  his 
assistance  to  public  enterprises,  particularly  in  the  field  of  city  planning, 
for  no  pecuniary  return  or  for  a  small  one,  considering  that  he  is  paid 
by  the  public  service  which  he  renders  and  also  by  the  calling  of  his 
name  to  public  attention  in  a  desirable  way.  He  may  enter  competi- 
tions, both  to  try  his  powers  against  those  of  his  fellows,  and  for  the 
public  notice  which  any  success  would  bring,  quite  as  much  as  for  the 
hope  of  any  immediate  pecuniary-  reward.  He  may  join  professional 
societies,  that  he  may  learn  what  other  landscape  architects  are  doing 
and,  by  contributing  to  the  reputation  of  the  profession  at  large,  so 
promote  his  own. 

Some  of  these  activities  are  primarily  for  the  young  man ;  others 
will  be  kept  up  throughout  a  man's  professional  life.  In  any  case  they 
are  but  preliminary  to  getting  work,  and  they  will  not  of  themselves 
enable  a  man  to  do  good  work.  It  is  very  rare  that  a  reputation  of 
any  magnitude  or  permanence,  or  a  landscape  architect's  business  of 
any  considerable  size,  rests  on  anything  else  than  the  good  will  of  a 
succession  of  satisfied  clients.* 

Every  landscape  architect  will  have  to  decide  whether  or  not  it  is  Advertising 
desirable  for  him  to  seek  publicity  by  any  form  of  advertising  in  papers  ^"^ 
or  magazines  or  otherwise.     Such  advertising  as  may  come  by  writing  ^ 

books  or  articles  in  magazines  or  newspapers  is  certainly  unobjection- 
able and  may  be  desirable  if  the  practitioner  can  spare  the  time  and 
energy  to  do  it.  Descriptions  of  pieces  of  work,  properly  credited  to 
their  designers,  are  often  printed  in  publications  where  they  are  of 
general  or  professional  interest.  Their  advertising  value  to  the  prac- 
titioner is  considerable,  and  little  fault  can  be  found  with  the  designer 
for  writing  such  articles,  or  allowing  them  to  be  written  about  his 
work,  so  long  as  they  are  honest  descriptions,  and  not  written  more  to 

*  Cf.  the  article  by  C.  M.  Robinson  Getting  the  Business  in  Landscape  Archi- 
tecture, Apr.  191 7.     (See  References.) 


330 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

increase  the  reputation  of  the  designer  than  to  spread  a  knowledge 
of  design. 

It  is  not  desirable  that  a  landscape  architect  should  advertise  his 
professional  wares  in  the  direct  way  that  a  merchant  might  adopt  who 
had  goods  to  sell.  In  the  same  way  it  is  undesirable  even  to  place  a 
"card"  in  a  magazine  or  newspaper  with  any  self-laudatory  remark; 
and  indeed  there  is  considerable  feeling  in  the  profession,  as  there  is  in 
the  kindred  profession  of  architecture,  that  it  is  undesirable  to  insert 
even  a  professional  card  with  the  landscape  architect's  address.  There 
are  two  points  which  the  landscape  architect  should  consider  in  this 
matter :  the  effect  of  this  advertising  on  his  own  professional  standing 
and  its  effect  upon  the  reputation  of  his  profession  generally. 

"  A  society  should  discourage  any  one  of  its  members  from  doing  anything 
for  his  personal  gain  which  would  be  a  loss  to  the  society  at  large.  In  the 
case  of  advertising  by  landscape  architects  such  a  loss  would  be  most  surely 
caused  by  any  statement  by  an  individual  practitioner  which  would  lead  the 
public  to  believe  that  he  was  untrustworthy,  or  unduly  money-seeking,  or 
possessed  of  bad  taste ;  because  these  would  be  cardinal  faults  in  a  landscape 
architect,  and  the  public  would  inevitably  judge  the  rest  of  the  members  of 
the  society  by  what  they  knew  of  one. 

"No  one  would  deny  that,  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  American  Society 
of  Landscape  Architects,  any  individual  advertisement  was  bad  which  made 
the  practitioner  out  to  be  blatant  and  self-satisfied,  or  entirely  commercial  in 
his  view  of  his  profession.  On  the  other  hand,  a  dignified  statement  of  un- 
doubted facts  as  to  the  good  work  of  a  practitioner  could  do  the  Society  no 
harm.  But  even  such  a  statement  sounds  better  when  not  made  by  the  prac- 
titioner himself.  A  great  difficulty  in  the  case  of  the  landscape  architect  lies 
here  :  that  the  primary  qualification  of  a  landscape  architect  is  his  good  taste, 
and  a  man's  own  statement  that  he  has  good  taste  plainly  bears  little  weight 
with  any  one  else.  It  Is  this  fact  which  has  been  largely  the  cause  of  so  much 
writing  and  showing  of  pictures  of  completed  work  by  architects,  and,  to  a  less 
degree,  by  landscape  architects.  This  practice  enables  the  practitioner  to 
give  the  prospective  client  a  chance  to  determine  for  himself  whether  he  ap- 
proves or  not  of  the  practitioner's  taste."  * 

It  is  true  that  the  public  is  not  as  yet  sufficiently  informed  as  to 
where  to  go  to  obtain  the  services  of  a  skilled  landscape  architect.     It 

*  From  Editorial  The  Ethics  of  Professional  Advertising  written  by  H.  V.  Hubbard, 
in  Landscape  Architecture,  Oct.  1916. 


APPENDIX 331 

would  be  of  general  advantage  if  the  names  of  practitioners  of  recog- 
nized skill  were  given  more  publicity.  If  a  list  of  such  men  could  be 
compiled  and  published,  it  would  be  a  public  service.  There  is,  how- 
ever, obviously  no  accepted  authority  which  can  determine  which  prac- 
titioners are  skilled  and  which  not.  Any  list  of  skilled  practitioners 
would  therefore  be  an  affair  of  odious  comparisons.  It  would  be  pos- 
sible and  unobjectionable,  however,  to  publish  lists  of  the  members  of 
the  professional  societies,  or  local  chapters  of  societies,  in  any  profession. 
There  are  of  course  practitioners  of  the  highest  ability  who  are  not 
members  of  these  societies.  However,  if  the  societies  are  at  all  worth 
while  the  great  majority  of  the  skilled  practitioners  would  be  members. 

To  avoid  a  great  deal  of  repetition  in  correspondence  and  to  set  Professional 
forth  for  the  benefit  of  the  client  the  general  way  in  which  the  land-  Announcements 
scape  architect  does  his  work,  most  practitioners  have  some  form  of 
professional  statement  or  circular  in  more  or  less  detail  which  they 
may  send  to  prospective  clients  to  define  as  far  as  possible  the  rela- 
tions which  are  to  exist  between  the  client  and  his  professional  adviser. 
A  general  statement  of  this  kind  is  used  by  architects  which  has  the 
sanction  of  the  American  Institute  of  Architects.  The  activities  of  the 
landscape  architect  are  more  varied  and  so  more  difficult  to  codify, 
but  the  American  Society  of  Landscape  Architects  is  about  to  issue 
such  a  general  statement  for  the  benefit  of  its  members. 

Public  exhibitions  of  the  work  of  landscape  architects  are  valuable  Public 
in  two  ways  :  they  give  the  practitioner  a  chance  to  see  what  other  ■^■^^'^'"'okj 
practitioners  are  doing,  and  they  give  the  public  a  chance  to  see  some- 
thing of  the  work  of  the  profession  as  a  whole.  In  both  these  ways, 
exhibitions  jointly  with  architects,  sculptors,  and  other  artists,  and 
with  engineers  and  others  concerned  in  city  planning,  are  particularly 
desirable.  In  such  exhibitions,  the  landscape  architect,  like  the  en- 
gineer but  even  to  a  greater  degree,  is  at  a  serious  disadvantage  in  the 
eyes  of  the  public.  A  great  deal  of  his  work,  however  beautiful  it  may 
be  in  actual  execution,  is  incapable  of  representation  on  plan  in  any  way 
which  would  make  it  particularly  decorative  or  intelligible  to  an  un- 
trained person,  and  perspective  drawings  or  even  photographs  of  in- 
formal and  naturalistic  design  seldom  make  striking  pictures  and  sel- 
dom convey  the  atmosphere  of  the  original. 


332 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Competitions 


Landscape 
Architect, 
Client,  and 
Contractor 


Another  way  in  which  the  young  landscape  architect  may  hope  to 
get  work  and  make  himself  known  is  by  entering  into  the  competitions 
for  the  design  of  various  works  of  landscape  architecture  which  are  held 
from  time  to  time.  Because  they  give  an  opportunity  to  the  untried 
man,  they  are  in  so  far  good,  but  as  a  means  of  choosing  the  best  designer 
to  carry  out  a  certain  piece  of  work  they  are  often  quite  futile.*  As 
we  have  seen,  there  are  many  ideas  for  landscape  compositions  which 
cannot  be  represented  at  all  adequately  by  drawings.  Even  for  a  jury 
of  skilled  practitioners  it  is  often  very  difficult  to  determine  just  what 
idea  is  represented  by  a  given  drawing  and  whether  the  idea  would  be 
good  or  bad  in  execution.  Moreover,  however  much  the  competition 
drawings  may  show  of  the  ingenuity  and  inspiration  of  the  designer, 
they  show  little  or  nothing  of  his  experience  and  ability  in  actual  con- 
struction, and  in  the  final  working  out  of  the  design  on  the  ground  and 
its  adjustment  to  the  topography  which  is  so  largely  responsible  for  the 
final  effect  in  many  kinds  of  landscape  work.  And,  while  the  require- 
ments in  an  architectural  competition  may  be  stated  with  considerable 
definiteness  and  understood  in  practically  the  same  way  by  all  the 
competitors,  a  landscape  design,  that  of  a  small  park,  for  instance,  could 
be  properly  made  only  after  detailed  study  of  the  local  conditions,  an 
amount  of  work  which  few  men  would  undertake  for  as  small  a  chance 
of  reward  as  most  competitions  offer.  The  drawings  submitted  are 
thus  likely  to  be  superficial  and  based  on  insufficient  knowledge.  From 
the  point  of  view,  therefore,  of  the  conservation  of  the  energy  of  the 
competitors  and  the  judges,  and  the  saving  of  money  to  those  financ- 
ing the  actual  work,  it  would  usually  be  better  to  seek  competent 
assistance  in  the  choice  of  a  professional  adviser  and  then  allow  this 
adviser  to  do  his  work  assured  from  the  beginning  of  reasonable  re- 
muneration. 

The  landscape  architect  serves  his  client  f  in  the  following  different 
ways.  He  finds  out  what  the  client  desires  in  the  way  of  landscape 
utility  and  beauty  and  he  advises  him  how  he  may  best  obtain  it.  He 
works  out  in  detail  and  records  as  far  as  possible  in  his  plans  and  speci- 

*  Cf.  the  articles  by  C.  D.  Lay  on  competitions  in  Landscape  Architecture,  v.  3, 
4,  and  5. 

t  Cf.  p.  338. 


APPENDIX 333 

fications  the  construction  which  the  client  wishes  to  have  undertaken. 
He  acts  as  the  agent  of  his  client  in  making  sure  that  the  terms  of  the 
plans  and  contracts  and  specifications  are  made  plain  to  the  contractor  * 
both  before  and  especially  during  construction,  and  he  also  acts  as  an 
impartial  arbiter  between  the  client  and  the  contractor  to  determine 
whether  or  not  the  work  is  done  in  accordance  with  the  landscape 
architect's  ideas  as  set  forth  in  the  contract. 

In  this  work  the  landscape  architect  must  cooperate  f  with  other  Cooperation 
professional  advisers  and  with  all  concerned  in  bringing  about  the  best  °f  Landscape 
final  result.     The  thing  in  which  the  client  is  particularly  interested  is  other  Practi- 
not  the  professional  dignity  nor  the  personal  opinions  of  any  of  the  tioners 
people  whom  he  employs,  but  merely  the  efficient  completion  of  the 
work  undertaken.     When  any  designer  is  charged  with  carrying  out  so 
complex  a  scheme  that  the  collaboration  of  another  designer  is  neces- 
sary, the  simplest  arrangement  is  to  call  in  this  second  designer  as  a 
consultant.     The   consultant    supplies   from   his   experience   and   skill 
information  and  suggestions  for  the  consideration  of  the  responsible 
designer,  and  looks  over  the  whole  work  with  a  view  of  discovering  any 
consideration  in  the  design  or  any  flaw  in  the  execution  which  might 
have  escaped  the  attention  of  the  designer.     The  consultant  is  not  re- 
sponsible, however,  for  the  perfect  execution  of  the  work.     It  is  assumed 
that  the  designer  is  competent  to  do  this,  and  he  cannot  be  relieved  of 
this  responsibility  without  confusion. 

Where  one  man  is  incapable  of  undertaking  the  general  responsi- 
bility for  the  whole  w^ork  in  this  way,  two  or  more  men  may  share  this 
responsibility.  Under  these  conditions,  it  is  essential  to  fix  some  defi- 
nite delimitation  of  the  field  within  which  each  collaborator  is  entirely 
responsible.  In  the  case  of  the  private  estate  and  similar  work,  the 
only  clear  delimitation  is  a  territorial  one.  It  is  important,  however, 
that  each  designer  should  serve  as  a  consultant  on  the  work  of  the 
other,  and  that  there  should  be  fixed  upon  both  the  joint  responsibility 
for  harmonizing  the  work  as  a  whole.     Such  cooperation  means  that 

*  Cf.  p.  344. 

t  Part  of  the  substance  of  this  follows  a  paper  by  F.  L.  Olmsted,  Jr.,  Cooperation 
between  Architect  and  Landscape  Architect,  published  in  Landscape  Architecture, 
Jan.   1912.     (See  References.) 


334 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Cooperation 
in  City 
Planning 


Organization 
and  Equip- 
ment of  a 
Landscape 
Architects 
Office 


Clerical 
Force 


each  designer  shall  be  informed,  at  least  in  a  general  way,  as  to  what 
the  other  is  doing  and  means  to  do,  and  that  each  shall  consult  the 
other  sufficiently  in  advance  of  the  construction  of  any  work  so  that 
the  ideas  of  both  shall  be  made  as  far  as  possible  effective.  Such  collab- 
oration requires  tact,  sympathetic  insight,  and  mutual  respect  in  the 
collaborators,  and  some  men  otherwise  good  designers  are  unfortu- 
nately incapable  of  serving  a  client  in  this  way. 

These  two  methods  of  cooperation  among  designers  are  much  the 
most  likely  to  prove  successful.  Of  course  there  can  be  effective  co- 
operation among  the  various  assistants  in  a  landscape  architect's  office, 
and  some  of  the  larger  offices  of  architects,  engineers,  and  landscape 
architects  have  assistants  trained  in  these  three  fields.  If  the  respon- 
sible designer  is  himself  capable  of  appreciating  and  handling  the  work 
in  its  entirety,  this  is  an  excellent  system  of  cooperation.  If  he  is  not, 
he  is  little  better  than  a  quack  and  an  exploiter  of  other  men's  ability. 

The  broadest  field  of  professional  activity  in  which  the  landscape 
architect  finds  himself  most  frequently  in  cooperation  with  practi- 
tioners from  other  professions  is  the  field  of  city  planning,  where  the 
landscape  architect  works  in  collaboration  with  engineer,  architect, 
sociologist,  economist,  or  lawyer.  Here  the  delimitation  of  field  can- 
not be  territorial,  but  must  be  according  to  the  subjects  in  which  the 
various  collaborators  are  severally  skilled.  It  is  therefore  doubly  im- 
portant that  each  collaborator  should  appreciate  the  point  of  view  of 
the  others,  and  that  all  should  have  at  least  a  sound  fundamental  con- 
ception of  the  subject  of  city  planning  as  a  whole. 

There  are  some  landscape  architects,  especially  among  the  younger 
men,  as  there  are  architects  and  engineers,  who,  so  to  speak,  are  their 
own  office  force ;  and  indeed  a  great  deal  of  good  work  is  done  by  the 
man  with  a  small  practice  who  keeps  all  its  details  in  his  own  mind ; 
but  for  any  considerable  amount  of  professional  work  it  is  necessary 
that  the  landscape  architect  should  have  assistants,  and  that  they 
should  be  good  both  in  their  own  field  and  as  parts  of  the  office  machine. 

Assistance  may  so  frequently  be  found  for  the  clerical  work  of  an 
office  at  so  low  a  price  that  a  business  would  be  small  indeed  which 
could  not  afford  some  assistance  of  this  kind.  This  work  is  however 
extremely  important  to  the  efficiency  of  the  whole  organization.     A 


APPENDIX 335 

man  is  often  judged  by  the  appearance  of  his  letters,  but  the  time  of 
the  landscape  architect  spent  in  checking  and  correcting  poor  work 
of  this  kind  is  time  wasted  which  should  be  applied  to  better  purpose. 
The  accuracy  and  availability  of  figures  and  accounts,  the  quickness 
with  which  records  and  data  of  all  kinds  are  available,  will  be  an  abso- 
lutely essential  factor  in  any  quickness  and  efficiency  of  performance 
which  the  office  may  have  as  a  whole. 

It  seldom  happens  that  the  same  man  is  equally  good  as  designer  Technical 
and  draftsman  in  an  office  and  as  superintendent  and  inspector  on  the  p-^j  r 
ground,  so  in  large  offices  there  are  usually  some  men  who  are  prin- 
cipally indoor  men,  and  others  who  are  sent  from  job  to  job  to  see  to 
the  actual  execution.  This  subdivision  of  effort  is  hardly  possible 
with  a  small  office  force,  and  a  complete  separation  of  the  two  activi- 
ties is  not  at  all  advisable.  Considerable  actual  familiarity  with  con- 
struction is  necessary  to  the  development  of  an  office  assistant  if  he  is 
to  be  anything  more  than  a  mere  draftsman,  and  familiarity  with  de- 
sign in  all  its  phases  is  a  great  asset  to  a  superintendent. 

For  good  work  it  is  extremely  desirable  that  at  least  one  person  shall 
be  familiar  with  the  job  from  its  beginning  to  its  end.  Proper  filing  of 
correspondence  and  recording  of  plans  in  the  office  and  proper  return- 
ing and  filing  of  reports  from  the  representative  on  the  ground  will 
give  at  any  time  a  general  idea  of  the  state  of  the  work ;  but  there  are 
endless  details  which  will  not  get  so  recorded,  and  all  kinds  of  knowl- 
edge of  personal  qualifications  of  those  concerned  in  the  work,  which 
can  be  kept  only  in  the  head  of  some  one  who  has  personally  followed 
the  whole  progress  of  the  job.*  In  a  small  office  this  person  would  be 
the  landscape  architect  himself ;  in  a  large  office  this  necessity  is  likely 
to  give  rise  to  the  custom  of  intrusting  some  one  man  with  a  number 
of  pieces  of  work  under  the  general  supervision  of  the  landscape  archi- 
tect, and  expecting  him  to  take  such  measures  as  he  sees  fit,  and  direct 
such  subordinate  members  of  the  office  force  as  are  available  in  handling 
this  work.  Here  arises  a  temptation  to  the  busy  landscape  architect 
which  would  usually  best  not  be  yielded  to,  namely,  when  a  new  piece 
of  work  comes  in,  to  turn  it  over  at  once  to  some  responsible  man  to 
make  alternative  preliminan.-  sketches  to  be  judged  by  the  landscape 

*  cf.  p.  341-342. 


336   LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

architect.  If  the  landscape  architect  is  a  better  critic  than  he  is  an 
artist,  this  may  be  his  best  way  of  working ;  but  otherw'ise  it  would 
save  much  time  and  put  more  of  the  individuality  of  the  landscape 
architect  himself  into  his  work,  if  he  were  to  take  time  personally  to 
master  the  general  aspects  of  the  job  and  himself  to  prepare  sketches 
to  be  worked  up  by  his  office  force.* 

Since  an  assistant  often  works  on  several  jobs  in  the  same  day, 
and  since  it  is  necessary  to  know  how  much  expense  for  assistants' 
time  is  properly  chargeable  to  each  job,  it  is  a  common  custom  in  land- 
scape architects'  offices  to  pay  the  assistants  by  the  hour  and  to  have 
them  hand  in  daily  or  weekly  a  time-card  showing  how  many  hours 
they  have  worked  on  the  various  jobs  with  which  they  have  been  con- 
cerned. There  will  be  a  certain  amount  of  time  not  chargeable  to  the 
client,  and  this  is  charged  to  the  office  and  becomes  a  part  of  the  un- 
differentiated expense  like  heat  and  rent. 
Office  Reference  The  landscape  architect  files  reference  material  for  two  reasons  : 
Material  because  he  cannot  remember  it  all  himself,  and  because,  if  he  could, 

he  could  not  spare  time  to  explain  it  to  his  office  force.  The  collections, 
then,  are  a  sort  of  general  office  memory,  and  the  ideal  collections  should 
work  like  a  man's  memory,  giving  the  required  information  quickly 
and  completely,  no  matter  from  what  point  of  view  it  is  sought.  Any 
approach  to  this  ideal  will  mean  careful  arrangement  of  the  material 
according  to  some  definite  system,  which  should  be  as  simple,  and 
therefore  as  generally  usable  by  the  office  force,  as  the  mass  of  the  data 
will  allow. 

The  material  to  be  arranged  is  of  two  kinds  :  that  pertaining  to 
particular  clients  and  that  for  general  reference.  Under  the  first  head 
are  plans,  planting  lists,  contracts  and  specifications,  estimate  books, 
reports  of  visits,  photographs,  and  so  on.  Under  the  second  are  pho- 
tographs of  general  interest,  trade  catalogues  including  nursery  cata- 
logues, perhaps  samples  of  materials,  —  brick,  tile,  garden  pottery,  and 
so  on, — ^  pamphlets,  portfolios  of  plates,  books,  magazines,  and  maps. 
The  amount  of  material  kept  in  the  landscape  architect's  office  will 
depend  to  some  extent  on  the  value  and  availability  of  other  collec- 
tions in  public  libraries  or  similar  places  of  reference,  but  most  of  the 

*  cf.  p.  340-341- 


APPENDIX 


337 


information  wanted  is  wanted  at  once,  and  some  collection  for  ready 
reference  is  almost  always  necessary. 

For  a  fuller  discussion  of  this  subject  see  The  Arrangement  of  the 
Professional  Collections  of  a  Landscape  Architect*  A  comprehensive 
scheme  of  classification  of  the  subject  of  landscape  architecture  which 
is  intended  for  the  detailed  arrangement  of  such  material  in  libraries, 
schools,  and  professional  offices  is  soon  to  appear. f 

*  Article  by  Henry  V.  Hubbard  and  Theodora  Kimball  in  Landscape  Architecture, 
Jan.  1913,  V.  3,  p.  76-89. 

t  Prepared  by  same  authors. 


"^iT-  \ 


Part  II 

NOTES   ON   PROCEDURE   IN   DESIGN 

The  client  —  Topographic  data  —  Design  —  Representation  of  design- — ■ 
Models  —  Pictures  and  plans  —  Written  statements  —  Verbal  directions  and 
explanations  —  Series  of  drawings  for  a  landscape  job  —  An  example  of  rep- 
resentation of  design  :  presentation  of  landscape  plans  —  Superintendence  : 
of  construction  —  Of  maintenance. 

The  landscape  architect  starting  upon  a  new  design  —  of  a  private 
estate  for  instance  —  has  first  to  familiarize  himself  with  two  impor- 
tant governing  circumstances  :  the  client,  his  means,  mode  of  life,  per- 
sonality, and  desires  ;  and  the  location,  its  shape,  topography,  soil, 
exposure,  vegetation,  and  all  the  thousand  physical  characteristics 
which  will  make  certain  kinds  of  design  desirable  and  others  impossible. 
The  Client  The  landscape  architect  should  remember  that  he  is  seldom  called 

in  primarily  to  express  his  own  ideas,  but  rather  to  interpret  and  ex- 
press the  client's  half-formed  desires  in  a  way  which  the  client  has 
neither  the  artistic  training  nor  the  technical  skill  to  do  for  himself.* 
The  client  is  likely  to  be  uncommunicative  at  first  as  to  the  amount  he 
is  willing  to  spend,  or  perhaps  to  set  as  a  limit  a  smaller  sum  than  that 
which  he  really  would  devote  to  the  construction  if  he  were  convinced 
it  were  what  he  actually  desired.  The  client  is  unlikely,  without  some 
persuasion,  to  discuss  at  much  length  the  customs  and  particular  re- 
quirements of  his  family;  in  fact  he  often  will  not  realize  the  effect 
these  should  have  upon  the  design.  It  often  happens  moreover  that 
the  client  means  to  take  up  on  his  new  property  a  more  expensive 
mode  of  life  than  that  to  which  he  has  been  before  accustomed,  and  he 
does  not  himself  know  what  his  future  desires  will  be.  It  is  very  im- 
portant, therefore,  that  the  landscape  architect  should  familiarize  him- 

*  Cf.  Chapter  II,  p.  15-16  and  Chapter  VI,  p.  86. 
338 


APPENDIX 339 

self  as  far  as  he  may  with  his  client  and  with  the  ground  before  he 
gets  far  with  his  design,  for  his  design  should  be  before  all  things  a 
reasoned  meeting  of  a  definite  problem,  and  not  a  scheme  conceived  in  one 
style  and  for  one  purpose  and  then  mutilated  or  stultified  to  fit  another. 

On  his  first  visit  to  the  ground  the  landscape  architect  may  make  Topographic 
notes  enough  of  existing  conditions  to  enable  him  to  produce  some  kind  ^^'■'^ 
of  preliminary  sketches  for  discussion  with  his  client.  If  the  work  is 
at  a  considerable  distance  from  his  office  and  he  has  but  little  time  on 
the  ground,  a  rough  sketch  of  the  topography,  perhaps  merely  from 
paced  measurements  of  the  principal  dimensions,  but  accompanied 
by  photographs  of  more  important  features  taken  from  places  desig- 
nated on  the  sketch,  may  be  sufficient  data.  At  the  same  time,  however, 
the  landscape  architect  should  note  such  features  as  must  later  be  very 
accurately  located  on  account  of  their  importance  in  the  design.  If 
the  work  is  to  go  ahead,  it  will  be  desirable,  on  a  topography  of  any 
complication,  to  have  a  topographic  map  prepared  showing  bound- 
aries, buildings,  fences  and  walls,  roads  and  paths,  trees  where  they 
will  affect  the  design,  and  the  elevations  and  modelings  of  the  sur- 
face of  the  ground,  particularly  in  those  places  where  this  surface  is 
likely  to  be  changed  by  the  new  construction.  This  topographic  map 
may  be  made  by  a  civil  engineer,  or  it  may  be  done,  in  smaller  work, 
by  the  office  of  the  landscape  architect.  In  large  work  an  engineer 
would  usually  best  be  employed,  because  this  is  his  professional  busi- 
ness and  he  will  be  likely  to  do  it  better  and  more  cheaply  than  the 
landscape  architect  can  do  it.  The  advantage  of  having  a  topographic 
map  made  by  the  landscape  architect's  office  is  that  some  one  in  the 
office  In  this  way  acquires  a  detailed  familiarity  with  the  ground  which 
will  be  very  useful  in  subsequent  design.  In  any  case,  the  landscape 
architect  should  inform  the  maker  of  the  topographic  map  as  to  what 
landscape  features  must  be  recorded  accurately  and  what  may  be  neg- 
lected. Otherwise  much  labor  may  be  wasted  in  acquiring  data  that 
are  never  used.  If  there  is  any  doubt  as  to  the  use  of  the  data,  however, 
it  is  much  better  to  err  on  the  side  of  getting  too  much  rather  than  too 
little.  Special  pains  should  be  taken  to  record  such  things  as  the 
existence  and  elevation  of  cellar  windows  and  areas,  where  there  is  a 
building,  the  elevation  of  the  ground  at  the  tops  and  bottoms  of  steps 


340 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

and  so  on,  and  the  kind,  diameter,  spread,  and  condition  of  trees,  and 
the  elevation  of  the  ground  at  their  foot.  These  surveys  may  be 
greatly  added  to  by  photographs,  and  if  the  exact  locations  from  which 
the  photographs  were  taken  are  recorded,  further  objects  may  be 
located  upon  the  survey,  or  an  entire  location  survey  of  recognizable 
objects  may  be  made  by  measurements  taken  from  these  photographs.* 
Design  Having  familiarized  himself  as  far  as  possible  with  what  his  client's 

desires  are  and  are  likely  to  be,  and  with  the  governing  circumstances 
under  which  these  desires  must  be  met,  the  landscape  architect  pro- 
ceeds to  his  design.  If  he  means  to  do  his  work  quickly  and  efficiently, 
and  so  that  when  he  has  brought  it  to  an  end  he  may  feel  reasonably 
sure  that  he  has  done  the  best  that  he  is  capable  of  under  the  circum- 
stances, he  must  make  his  decisions  in  the  design  in  some  sequential 
and  orderly  way.  This  does  not  mean  that  he  should  have  some  stereo- 
typed, mechanical  method  of  approach  to  his  problem,  but  it  does 
mean  that  he  should  not  make  his  designing  simply  a  matter  of  inspira- 
tion. 

He  should  first  accept  those  restrictions  of  topography,  of  neces- 
sary dimensions  for  use,  of  necessary  limit  of  expense,  which  he  finds 
imposed,  and  let  them  in  so  far  shape  his  solution  for  him.  He  should 
then  decide  the  fundamental  questions  of  choice  of  style,  choice  of 
main  units  for  use  and  beauty  to  be  included  in  the  design,  and  perhaps 
such  important  things  as  house  location  and  orientation. f  It  is 
very  likely  that  at  this  point  a  number  of  different  alternatives  will  be 
possible.  The  designer  should  determine  which  of  these  alternatives 
are  worth  further  consideration,  and  then,  taking  the  essential  charac- 
teristics of  each  alternative,  put  it  into  sketch  form,  carrying  it  no 
further  than  is  necessary  for  its  comparison  with  other  alternatives  in 
respect  to  the  fundamental  factors  which  are,  so  far,  the  only  ones  be- 
ing considered.     It  is  commonly  much  better  to  produce  a  series  of 

*  With  the  progress  in  aeronautics  and  the  extensive  use  of  the  camera  from  mili- 
tary aircraft,  the  interest  in  this  form  of  surveying  has  increased  and  will  doubtless 
give  rise  to  a  literature  in  English  on  the  subject  more  up-to-date  than  Lieut.  Henry 
A.  Reed's  Photography  as  applied  to  Surveying,  1888,  or  the  chapters  in  general  books 
on  topographic  surveying. 

t  Cf.  The  Estate,  Chapter  XI,  p.  253. 


APPENDIX 3£i 

sketches,  than  to  erase  one  sketch  to  supplant  it  by  another  on  the  same 
sheet,  for  even  though  an  alternative  be  thrown  away  on  account  of 
some  insuperable  objection,  still  it  may  suggest  an  excellence  in  some 
other  respect  which  may  be  incorporated  in  the  solution  finally  adopted. 
If  it  is  possible  to  get  the  client's  cooperation  in  the  design  and  his 
acceptance  of  a  rough  sketch  at  this  point,  it  is  very  desirable.  It 
should  be  remembered,  however,  that  the  client  is  probably  less  used 
than  is  the  landscape  architect  to  making  decisions  among  possibilities 
of  this  kind,  and  that  the  submission  of  too  many  alternative  schemes 
may  cause  in  his  mind  present  confusion  and  future  regret  over  in- 
congruous excellences  foregone. 

Having  determined  the  main  outlines  of  the  design,  a  similar  pro- 
cess may  be  applied  in  the  decisions  as  to  the  details  of  the  parts.  At 
this  point,  if  not  before,  the  ordinary  busy  practitioner  turns  the  work 
over  to  an  assistant  and  contents  himself  thereafter  with  the  function 
of  critic,  or  of  designer  of  such  smaller  things  as  are  of  particular  im- 
portance or  which  particularly  appeal  to  him.  In  all  this  matter  of 
design,  the  landscape  architect  should  have  a  feeling  towards  his  work 
much  like  that  of  the  modeler  towards  his  plastic  clay.  The  land- 
scape architect  draws  lines  on  paper,  but  in  his  mind's  eye  he  sees  the 
ground,  and  the  houses  and  trees  and  roads,  and  other  three-dimensioned 
objects  upon  it,  and  as  he  makes  and  compares  and  discards  his  alter- 
native sketches,  he  is  in  his  imagination  first  arranging  his  design  in 
simple  and  somewhat  formless  masses,  next  determining  the  main  out- 
lines and  parts  of  these  masses,  and  then  and  not  till  then  dealing  with 
the  subordinate  beauties  and  intricacies  of  detail,  which  if  they  were 
sooner  brought  into  being  might  be  discarded  and  utterly  wasted  with 
the  discarding  of  some  larger  mass  which  they  adorn. 

It  is  one  thing  to  determine  on  a  good  design ;  it  is  another  thing 
to  record  this  design  on  paper,  and  then  to  bring  it  into  actual  realiza- 
tion on  the  ground.  There  are  many  conclusions  which  cannot  be  re- 
corded, indeed  which  cannot  be  reached  until  they  are  wrought  out  on 
the  ground  under  the  personal  direction  of  the  designer.*  The  archi- 
tect can  represent  his  design  with  considerable  accuracy  by  drawings, 
nevertheless  architectural  superintendence  requires  many  decisions 
*  Cf.  Superintendence  of  Construction  and  of  Maintenance,  p.  3SI-353' 


342 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

which  are  the  work  of  an  artist.  Still  more  must  the  superintendence 
of  landscape  design  require  designing  skill,  and  properly  the  skill  of 
some  one  who  has  been  familiar  with  the  design  from  its  inception, 
and  has  in  his  mind  therefore,  as  things  to  be  attempted  in  the  finished 
work,  a  multitude  of  excellences  which  have  been  nowhere  else  recorded. 
This  is  one  of  the  reasons  why  a  young  landscape  architect  who  fol- 
lows his  own  work  from  start  to  finish  may  well  be  more  successful  on 
a  small  job,  as  we  have  said,  than  a  large  office  would  be,  however 
experienced,  where  the  work  is  passed  from  hand  to  hand.  Still,  as 
far  as  it  is  possible,  definite  record  of  the  determined  design  must  be 
made. 
Representation  Like  the  architect,  but  unlike  the  painter  and  the  sculptor,   the 

of  Design  landscape  architect  is  obliged  to  have  the  actual  work,  which  bears  his 

name  as  designer,  executed  by  other  hands ;  he  has  therefore  to  repre- 
sent the  design  in  some  way  before  the  real  construction  begins.  He 
has  to  convey  his  idea  of  the  completed  work  first  to  his  client,  and 
then,  after  acceptance  by  him,  to  the  contractor.  And  as  the  work  of 
execution  takes  time,  there  must  be  a  fairly  permanent  record  of  most 
of  the  proposed  work,  which  shall  serve  as  a  source  of  information  about 
the  landscape  architect's  idea  to  the  client  and  to  the  contractor  or 
whoever  executes  the  work. 

In  actual  practice  this  means  of  conveyance  and  record  takes  four 
-  forms  :  —  models,  more  or  less  accurate  three-dimensional  representa- 
tions of  the  thing  proposed,  at  some  convenient  reduced  scale  ;  pictures, 
namely,  perspectives,  elevations,  plans,  sections ;  written  words,  for 
instance,  reports  and  specifications ;  and  spoken  words,  explanations 
to  the  client,  directions  on  the  ground,  and  so  on.  Each  form  of  expres- 
sion has  its  own  advantages,  each  can  do  what  no  other  can ;  but  each 
has  its  own  disadvantages  —  it  does  too  little  or  too  much. 
Models  The  model  *  has  the  great  advantage  that  it  gives  all  the  different 

aspects  of  the  design,  —  its  appearance  from  any  point  of  view,  its  ele- 
vation as  well  as  its  plan,  and  to  some  extent  even  its  color  and  texture. 
But  if  the  model  is  to  do  all  this,  it  must  be  very  well  executed  :  con- 
sistency of  scale,  even  reasonable  representation  of  texture,  is  hard  to 
*  See  article  by  G.  C.  Curtis,  Landscape  in  Relief,  in  Landscape  Architecture,  Jan. 
1913!  V.  3,  p.  49-58,  with  illustrations. 


APPENDIX 343 

get,  and  the  very  actuality  of  the  model  tends  to  make  its  faults  the 
more  noticeable  and  its  misrepresentations  the  more  misleading.  A 
model  is  intelligible  to  many  who  cannot  understand  a  plan,  and  is 
indeed  to  the  mind  of  almost  any  one  more  definite  and  concrete  than 
a  drawing.  It  has  a  place  therefore  which  no  other  method  of  repre- 
sentation can  fill,  but  its  cost  and  the  difficulty  of  transporting  it  tend 
greatly  to  restrict  its  use. 

Pictures  are  much  cheaper  than  models.  They  have  the  advantage  Pictures  and 
of  stating  at  once,  if  not  all  the  spacial  relations,  at  least  all  those  in  ^^^^^^ 
the  chosen  plane.  If  properly  done,  a  picture  shows  not  only  rela- 
tions designed  to  occur,  but  relations  indirectly  caused  by  the  directly 
determined  design.  This,  of  course,  is  the  greatest  advantage  of  pic- 
torial representation  in  study.  Like  the  model,  it  shows  not  only 
whether  the  ideas  decided  on  are  good,  but  it  shows  also  what  results 
arise  from  these  decisions.  Further,  like  the  model,  it  allows  the 
client  to  follow  any  sequence  of  relation  he  pleases,  and  to  look  at  the 
things  presented  in  any  order  he  chooses.  It  has  the  disadvantage 
that  it  is  more  definite  than  it  is  always  desired  to  be,  and  so  leads  to 
misunderstandings,  —  for  example,  a  triangle,  if  drawn,  must  be  isosceles 
or  scalene  or  whatever  the  draftsman  draws  it,  whereas  all  he  may  mean 
to  pledge  himself  to  is,  perhaps,  that  it  shall  have  three  angles  and 
straight  sides.  Again,  pictorial  representation  attracts  attention  to  the 
picture,  to  the  means  of  expression,  —  more  attention  than  verbal 
representation  commonly  attracts  to  the  words.  This  is  presumably 
because  we  are  more  familiar  with  written  and  spoken  words  than  with 
drawings  as  a  means  of  expression ;  so  with  speech  we  notice  the  sense, 
not  the  diction,  but  with  a  drawing  we  are  apt  to  notice  the  picture 
rather  than  the  thing  portrayed.  It  is  often  inadvisable  that  the 
client's  attention  should  be  directed  primarily  to  the  drawing  as  such, 
for  it  distracts  his  attention  from  the  thing  expressed,  particularly  since 
the  appearance  of  the  drawing  often  cannot  at  all  adequately  repre- 
sent the  appearance  of  the  executed  design. 

Words    can    show    reasons,  that    is   abstract,   non-visual   relations.  Written 
Words  are  sequential,  and  cannot  show  everything  at  once.     We  run  ^^^'^^"^^^^ 
a  risk  here  of  losing  the  attention  of  our  client  before  he  gets  our  point, 
but  we  have  the  advantage  that  the  client  must  follow  our  sequence 


344 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

of  thought,  not  his  own,  as  he  may  do  with  a  plan,  and  we  can  put  the 
emphasis  where  we  please  more  readily  than  we  can  in  a  drawing.  The 
writing  of  a  landscape  architect,  like  all  of  his  work,  should  be  a  work 
of  art.  He  should  determine,  as  in  all  designs,  what  ideas  he  has  to 
convey,  what  their  relative  importance  is,  what  form  of  expression  is 
suited  to  their  presentation.  Perhaps  a  plain  statement  of  the  facts  is 
best,  perhaps  a  tabulation  of  figures,  perhaps  a  simile,  perhaps  a  collo- 
quial or  chatty  description  like  a  letter.  Often  the  final  record  of  the 
design  will  take  the  form  of  a  plan  or  other  pictorial  presentation 
accompanied  by  a  report  or  written  discussion  for  the  benefit  of  the 
client  and  a  legally-drawn  contract  and  specifications  for  the  guidance 
of  the  contractor.  We  should  put  on  the  plan  the  visual  relations  best 
shown  by  plan,  and  put  in  the  report  the  reasons,  the  unseen  relations 
of  our  subject.  It  is  a  common  mistake  to  write  as  a  report  merely  a 
description  of  what  is  shown  on  the  plan. 

In  writing  specifications  to  form  a  part  of  the  contract,  —  the  legal 
covenant  between  the  owner  and  the  contractor,  designating  what  shall 
be  done  and  how  it  shall  be  paid  for,  —  it  should  be  considered  that  if 
the  interpretation  of  the  specifications  comes  before  the  courts  for  deci- 
sion, they  will  endeavor  to  determine  what  was  actually  in  the  minds 
of  the  parties  at  the  time  the  contract  was  made,  and  that  the  more 
logically  the  statements  are  arranged,  and  the  clearer  the  diction  is, 
the  less  difficulty  will  there  be.  But  it  should  also  be  remembered  that 
recourse  to  courts  of  law  should  be  avoided  if  it  is  in  any  way  possible, 
and  that  for  this  reason  also,  the  simpler  the  language  is  and  the  more 
capable  of  being  understood  by  an  ordinary  man,  the  better  it  will  be 
for  its  purpose.  Speaking  generally,  it  is  reasonable  to  say  that  those 
clauses  which  set  forth  the  legal  relations  contemplated  between  the 
various  parties  to  the  contract  should  be  in  a  definite  and  more  or  less 
stereotyped  legal  form,*  but  those  clauses  which  describe  the  work  to 
be  done  in  detail  should  be  written  In  everyday  language  to  be  under- 
stood without  mistake  by  the  contractor. 

*  Refer  to  J.  B.  Johnson's  Engineering  Contracts  and  Specifications,  a  convenient 
compilation  of  the  laws  on  the  subject  for  the  layman.  The  examples  are  drawn 
from  the  field  of  engineering  and  are  applicable  only  with  modifications  to  the  speci- 
fications of  the  landscape  architect. 


APPENDIX 345 

Spoken  words  have  perhaps  their  greatest  use  in  modifying  general   Verbal 

ideas  for  the  particular  case,  in  amplifying  and  explaining  to  the  client  Directions  and 

i^  o  Ex'blanations 

the  meaning  of  written  statements  and  drawings,  and  in  directing  the 

workmen  on  the  ground.  Spoken  words  have  the  advantage  that  they 
enable  us  to  modify  and  repeat  our  statements  until  they  are  under- 
stood. They  suit  the  exact  moment,  but  they  are  not  permanent. 
If  they  can  be  remembered  and  legally  proved  by  witnesses,  verbal 
promises  are  of  course  in  many  cases  as  binding  as  written  contracts, 
but  the  obvious  difficulties  in  this  regard  make  it  best  to  reduce  to 
writing  almost  anything  which  is  worth  remembering  exactly. 

In  the  ordinary  practice  of  the  landscape  architect,  for  the  complete  Series  of 

carrying  out  of  a  job  a  fairly  definite  series  of  drawings  will  be  neces-  Drazvings  for 
J  J.  .      ,  ,  ,  .  r     ,  r  a  Landscape 

sary,  and  tor  practical  reasons  the  manner  oi  presentation  of  plans  of  job 

the  same  kind  will  be  more  or  less  similar  throughout  the  practice  of 
any  one  office.  The  first  conception  of  the  design  may  be  presented 
as  a  preliminary  plan  or  as  a  perspective  sketch,  something  intended 
to  be  attractive  in  appearance  and  to  convince  the  client  of  the  excel- 
lence and  beauty  of  the  scheme.  When  the  ideas  expressed  in  this 
way  have  been  modified  and  accepted  in  conference  with  the  client, 
there  may  follow  a  general  plan  setting  forth  the  complete  idea  in  its 
general  aspects  more  definitely,  and  perhaps  a  series  of  detail  plans 
showing  certain  portions  of  the  design  still  more  fully  at  a  larger  scale. 
For  use  in  construction  there  will  probably  be  a  grading  plan  based 
upon  the  topographic  map  and  showing  what  changes  are  intended  to 
be  made  in  the  surface  of  the  ground,  together  with  the  location  and 
general  form  of  such  constructions  as  are  planned,  —  roads,  walks, 
walls,  buildings,  planting  beds,  and  so  on.  Accompanying  this  repre- 
sentation of  the  grading  on  plan,  there  will  usually  be  profiles  of  the 
roads,  perhaps  also  of  the  paths,  and  cross-sections,  showing  more 
accurately  than  the  plan  can  do  certain  vertical  relations  of  the  pro- 
posed design.  Then  there  will  be  a  planting  plan,  accompanied  by  plant- 
ing lists,  showing  again  the  location  and  shapes  of  the  planting  beds  and 
the  number  and  kind  of  plants  which  are  to  be  used.  In  a  design  of 
greater  size,  complication,  and  importance,  there  will  be  more  grading 
plans  and  planting  plans,  perhaps  at  larger  scale,  or  accompanied  by 
detail  plans  for  certain  portions. 


346 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

The  methods  of  making  these  plans,  so  that  they  shall  be  most  effi- 
cient and  convenient  when  used  in  carrying  out  the  work  which  they 
represent,  are  matters  of  technical  procedure  for  which  we  have  not 
space  here ;   but  we  give  a  series  of  examples  of  such  drawings  (Draw- 
ings XXXVI  to  XL)  —  all   representing  a  piece  of  work  which  has 
actually  been  constructed  —  to  give  some  idea  of  their  relations  one 
to  another  and  of  reasonable  technical  excellence  in  their  preparation. 
An  Example  of         We  will  discuss  further  only  one  aspect  of  this  subject,  the  beauty 
Representation     ^^^  ^]^g  intelligibility  of  the  presentation  of  our  design  by  landscape 
Presentation  of    plans.     Many  of  the  more  general   considerations   pertaining  to  the 
Landscape  presentation  of  plans  will  have  also  an  application  to  the  rest  of  the 

field  of  expression.  The  questions  of  the  choice  of  different  mediums, 
pencil,  pen  and  ink,  pastel,  and  so  on,  and  the  technical  questions  of  the 
different  methods  of  reproduction  of  drawings  by  direct  contact  print- 
ing and  by  reduction  for  published  illustrations,  are  also  matters  for 
which  there  is  no  room  in  this  book. 

A  drawing  is,  as  we  have  said,  merely  one  way  of  conveying  an  idea  ; 
and  the  drawing,  like  the  written  and  the  spoken  words,  should  be 
suited  not  only  to  the  subject  treated  but  to  the  person  addressed. 
The  plain  man  who  knows  nothing  about  art  may  be  best  convinced 
by  a  maplike  plan,  a  simple  line  elevation ;  the  person  of  artistic  tem- 
perament, who  does  not  care  for  practical  detail,  may  be  best  approached 
with  a  colored  perspective ;  that  is,  we  may  emphasize  in  the  presenta- 
tion those  qualities  of  the  design  which  we  think  will  appeal  to  our 
client.  We  should  remember,  too,  that  the  client  is  judging  not  only 
the  design,  but  the  designer,  and  a  pretentious  rendering  might  be  as 
unfortunate  a  start  with  a  hard-headed  business  man  as  a  quotation 
from  Tennyson  would  be. 

There  are  always  two  distinct  purposes  which  will  influence  the  choice 
of  a  method  of  presentation  of  plans.  First,  to  record  the  ideas  which 
are  to  be  embodied  in  the  proposed  constructions,  and,  second,  to 
make  an  attractive  sheet.  Sometimes  the  first  object  is  greatly  domi- 
nant, for  instance,  in  grading  plans.  The  beauty  to  be  sought  here  is 
such  beauty  only  as  is  consonant  with  their  use  as  construction  draw- 
ings :  the  beauty  of  accurate  clean  drafting,  good  curves,  plain  legible 
consistent  lettering,  consistent  quality  of  line,  and  pleasant  arrange- 


APPENDIX 347 

ment  of  the  drawing  inside  of  border  lines,  where  this  is  possible  without 
loss  of  clearness.  All  plans  made  by  an  artist  should  have  artistic 
quality.  The  good  artist  will  strive  for  an  appropriate  quality,  and 
in  these  construction  plans  he  will  find  only  these  simple  kinds  of  beauty 
appropriate. 

Often  both  the  record  of  the  idea  and  the  beauty  of  the  sheet  are 
important,  as  in  the  case  of  preliminary  plans,  perspectives,  and  so  on, 
for  the  client.  Such  drawings  are  commonly  concerned  not  with  final 
small  details,  often  not  with  accurate  presentation  of  details  at  all  — 
these  being  not  at  the  time  decided  —  but  rather  with  a  presentation 
of  the  scheme  as  a  whole,  and  with  conveying  to  the  client  the  idea 
that  the  scheme  will  be  beautiful  when  executed.  The  attractiveness 
of  the  scheme  is  inevitably  judged  somewhat  by  the  attractiveness  of 
the  presentation,  whether  it  be  perspective  or  plan,  or  whatever  else. 
Also  the  general  artistic  ability  of  the  designer  is  judged  by  the  presen- 
tation, and  through  this,  again,  the  attractiveness  of  the  proposed  re- 
sult. The  client  may  say  to  himself:  "He  must  be  an  artist  to  pro- 
duce a  drawing  like  that ;  if  he  is  an  artist,  he  can  make  the  final  result 
look  well." 

Now,  especially  in  landscape  architecture,  a  drawing  or  a  design, 
faithfully  representing  something  which  if  constructed  would  be  beau- 
tiful, is  not  therefore  necessarily  itself  beautiful.  The  construction  is 
to  be  seen  in  perspective,  in  three  dimensions.  The  drawing  may  be 
—  usually  is  —  a  plan ;  and  the  appearance  of  the  plan  often  bears 
little  more  resemblance  to  the  construction  itself  than  does  the  appear- 
ance of  a  page  of  written  description  to  the  thing  described.  There  is 
therefore  always  a  problem  of  compromise  between  the  meaning  and 
the  appearance  of  the  drawing.  The  landscape  architect  must  express 
on  his  plan  the  various  elements  of  the  design  in  their  relations,  so  that 
things  of  dominant  importance  in  reality  shall  appear  so  in  plan,  and 
those  of  less  importance  shall  appear  similarly  with  their  proper  em- 
phasis. Things  related  in  reality  should  look  so  on  plan.  Things  of 
similar  appearance  in  reality  should  look  so  on  plan.  And  this  must 
be  done  in  such  a  way  that  the  resultant  sheet  shall  be  in  itself  deco- 
rative, as  a  piece  of  composition  in  line  or  color,  just  as  a  Persian  rug 
is  decorative,  without  any  reference  to  its  meaning. 


348 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

To  do  all  this,  we  plainly  must  be  able  to  make  things  as  shown  on 
plan  look  similar  or  different,  or  dominant  or  subordinate,  by  some 
means  other  than  their  size  and  shape,  for  these  are  fixed  by  the  size 
and  shape  of  the  objects  represented,  and  merely  to  represent  these 
objects  accurately  to  scale  may  not  place  them  in  their  true  relative 
importance. 

To  express  these  differences  on  a  flat  plan  we  must  depend  on  the 
variations  which  we  can  play  on  the  character  of  the  line  in  our  draw- 
ing, and  on  the  value,  color,  and  intensity  of  color  of  the  areas  on  plan.* 
But  we  must  not  in  doing  this  come  to  the  end  of  our  control  of  the 
effect  of  our  drawing ;  that  is,  it  must  still  be  possible  by  proper  manage- 
ment of  character  of  line,  of  value,  color,  intensity  of  color  —  any,  or 
all  of  these  —  to  produce  unity  of  appearance  in  the  drawing.  Which 
of  these  characteristics  of  our  drawing  we  shall  turn  to  account  prin- 
cipally in  expressing  our  idea  of  the  completed  construction,  and  which 
of  the  characteristics  we  shall  use  chiefly  in  beautifying  the  drawing 
itself,  is  a  new  problem  in  each  case. 

In  general,  differentiation  of  objects  is  best  expressed  by  color  of 
area  and  character  of  line,  for  with  these  we  can  represent  the  various 
characteristics  of  objects :  size,  shape,  texture,  and  color.  Houses, 
fences,  walls,  steps,  and  other  architectural  constructions  may  be  repre- 
sented by  ruled  lines.  Roads,  where  their  form  or  flow  of  curve  is  to 
be  emphasized,  may  be  drawn  in  definite  line  by  the  aid  of  a  French 
curve.  Trees,  shrubbery,  and  herbaceous  plants  may  be  represented 
in  their  loose  and  indefinite  texture  by  a  crumbly  or  otherwise  indefi- 
nite freehand  line,  usually  with  a  specific  difference  in  its  irregularity, 
in  scale  with  the  plants  represented  in  each  case.  Roads,  paths,  and 
other  things  may  be  shown  by  an  indefinite  line,  when  not  designed  to 
be  self-assertive  in  their  effect,  or  in  some  cases  when  not  definitely 
decided  on  as  to  form  or  location.  In  construction  plans,  the  difference 
between  the  freehand  and  the  ruled  lines  may  represent  the  difference 
between  existing  and  proposed  objects  or  surfaces. 

A  consistent  use  of  one  kind  of  line  suggesting  the  loose  texture  of 
foliage  growth,  and  one  general  color  —  usually  suggesting  green  —  to 
represent  trees,  in  connection  with  another  character  of  line  and  an- 

*  Cf.  Chapter  VII,  p.  io6. 


APPENDIX  349 

other  color  not  very  different,  representing  shrubs,  and  perhaps  a  third 
kind  of  line  and  more  brilliant  colors,  representing  herbaceous  plants  in 
flower,  will  give  simplicity  and  unity  to  each  planting  area,  mark  the 
difference  between  plants  and  other  objects,  and  still  not  preclude 
unity  of  appearance  of  the  whole  plan. 

Lettering  designating  the  various  objects  on  the  plan  makes  another 
element  of  line  in  the  composition.  In  an  informal  plan,  with  much 
foliage,  where  the  incidental  lettering  is  not  to  be  conspicuous,  free- 
hand lettering  drawn  with  a  somewhat  irregular  line  may  be  desirable 
for  its  consistency  of  texture  with  the  plan.  If  the  lettering  is  to  stand 
out  importantly,  or  if  the  whole  plan  is  largely  composed  of  ruled  lines, 
a  constructed  letter  will  probably  be  the  better  choice. 

There  is  a  wide  range  of  possibility  in  the  use  of  color  on  plan. 
There  is  always  a  temptation  to  try  to  represent  the  actual  colors  of 
the  objects  portrayed,  to  suggest  the  brightness  of  the  flowers  and  the 
sunshine,  but  this  is  commonly  a  temptation  which  would  best  not  be 
yielded  to  very  far.  Very  vivid  color  is  hard  to  handle  and  keep  in 
accord.  There  is  a  great  danger  of  a  garish  and  inharmonious  result, 
and  even  if  this  danger  be  avoided,  so  much  attention  would  be  at- 
tracted to  the  color  as  to  detract  from  the  effect  of  the  plan  as  repre- 
senting the  proposed  construction. 

Moreover,  the  landscape  forms  with  which  we  are  dealing  are  not 
capable  of  accurate  representation  on  plan.  The  whole  drawing  is 
arbitrary  and  conventional  at  best,  particularly  at  the  larger  scales, 
and  too  great  verisimilitude  of  color,  too  great  an  attempt  to  approxi- 
mate a  birdseye  view,  is  likely  not  to  oflFset  but  to  betray  the  necessarily 
conventional  form.  This  is  especially  the  case  when  buildings  are 
shown  in  ground-floor  plan  on  a  landscape  drawing.  The  more  con- 
vincingly the  trees  are  rendered,  the  more  incongruous  does  the  flat 
house-plan  become.  The  frequent  overlapping  of  the  branches  of 
trees  with  paths,  buildings,  and  so  on,  makes  some  arbitrary  method 
of  drafting  necessary,  if  both  tree  and  path  are  to  be  shown,  and  this 
fact  renders  lifelike  coloring  undesirable.  If  the  whole  drawing  is  at 
small  scale,  and  is  practically  a  birdseye  view,  bright  colors  may  suc- 
ceed ;  otherwise,  the  chances  are  in  favor  of  a  more  subdued  rendering. 

In  making  the  plan  itself  a  decorative  object,  we  have  two  form 


350 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

factors  which  we  can  control :  first,  which  side  up  we  shall  put  the  plan 
and  how  we  shall  arrange  the  border  line ;  second,  what  we  shall  have 
for  a  title,  scale,  north-point,  and  explanatory  notes,  and  where  we 
shall  put  them. 

There  are  various  considerations  determining  which  side  up  we  shall 
put  our  plan.  The  north-point  is  more  intelligible  if  pointing  up,  as 
on  ordinary  maps.  On  the  other  hand,  heavy  masses,  interesting 
things,  are  commonly  better  towards  the  top  rather  than  towards  the 
bottom  of  a  plan,  if  they  must  be  in  one  or  the  other  place.  If  there 
is  a  balanced  relation  of  parts  about  one  axis  only,  on  the  plan,  this 
relation  will  be  most  effective  if  its  axis  be  vertical. 

The  border  line  should  leave  as  little  unbalanced  space  inside  it  as 
possible ;  that  is,  the  rectangular  shape  of  the  border  line  should  fit 
the  shape  of  the  lot,  or  whatever  the  total  object  is,  —  or  rather  it 
should  fit  the  lot,  title,  scale,  north-point,  and  anything  else  there  may 
be  on  the  plan,  considered  all  as  one  composition. 

The  important  straight  lines  of  the  plan  should  run  parallel  to  the 
border  lines.  These  lines  may  be  of  two  kinds  :  lines  of  some  im- 
portant interior  mass,  for  example,  a  building  group  ;  or  boundary  lines 
of  the  total  area  treated.  If  a  formal  building  group  is  the  dominant 
factor  in  the  design,  it  may  often  best  be  oriented  with  its  main  axes 
parallel  with  the  border  lines ;  the  boundary  lines  of  the  lot,  or  other 
lines  not  parallel  to  this  system,  being  subdued  with  color  which  makes 
no  great  contrast  between  the  areas  within  and  without  the  boundary. 
The  important  side  of  the  dominant  object  —  for  example,  the  main 
fagade  of  the  house,  or  the  entrance  to  the  estate  —  is  commonly  best 
towards  the  bottom  of  the  plan.  This  is  especially  true  if  the  plan  is 
large  and  is  to  be  laid  on  a  table  to  be  looked  at.  Then  the  main  line 
of  sight  is  upwards  in  the  middle  of  the  plan,  and  the  most  important 
line  of  sight  on  the  ground  should,  if  possible,  be  represented  on  this 
line. 

If  shadows  are  indicated  on  the  plan,  they  should  come  from  a 
point  of  the  compass  where  it  is  possible  for  the  sun  to  be;  else  the 
plan  is  not  truthful  as  to  what  areas  are  sunny  and  what  shady,  an 
important  point  in  the  design. 

On  plan,  however,  it  is  customary  to  have  the  light  coming  diago- 


APPENDIX 


351 


nally  down  from  the  upper  left-hand  corner.  This  is  so  common  a  con- 
vention that  any  other  direction,  except  perhaps  out  of  the  upper 
right-hand  corner,  may  look  strange,  so  it  is  well,  if  it  can  be  done  with- 
out contravening  some  other  considerations,  to  arrange  the  plan  ac- 
cordingly. 

The  composition  can  be  improved,  inside  the  border  line,  by  properly 
composing  such  extra  elements  as  can  be  added,  —  for  instance,  the  title, 
the  north-point,  and  notes  concerning  the  plan.  As  these  can  be  made 
of  various  forms,  the}-  can  be  adapted  to  the  spaces  left  over  between 
the  plan  and  the  border  line.  They  are,  however,  all  things  made  of 
lines,  not  masses,  and  therefore  have  a  limited  use.  One  reason  for 
putting  a  title  into  a  "cartouche"  is  that  this  makes  the  title  a  mass 
in  the  resultant  design.  A  properly  spaced  and  composed  block  of 
lettering  will,  however,  fill  a  space  as  a  recognizable  tone  when  seen 
from  a  distance,  even  if  it  is  not  surrounded  by  a  boundary  line.  It  is 
commonly  desirable  to  have  it  serve  in  this  way. 

Though  the  various  esthetic  effects  which  we  have  just  discussed 
are  always  worth  striving  for  in  a  landscape  plan,  in  actual  professional 
work  another  consideration  enters  in  :  the  desirability  of  uniformity  in 
plans  of  the  same  kind,  the  establishment  of  an  office  practice  in  pres- 
entation, the  choice  of  a  method  which  shall  be  rapid  and  simple,  and 
thus  inexpensive  and  easily  learned.  This  stereotyping  of  presenta- 
tion is  certainly  a  good  thing  in  such  drawings  as  grading  plans,  but 
for  preliminary  sketches  or  any  drawings  where  the  esthetic  efi'ect  of 
the  plan  itself  is  an  important  consideration,  it  should  not  be  much 
encouraged. 

In  our  state  of  society  the  accepted  and  almost  inevitable  way  in  Superintmd- 
which  landscape  work  is  actually  constructed  is  that  the  contractor  '^"  °f.  ^°^' 
shall,  for  a  stipulated  payment,  undertake  the  financial  responsibility 
for  the  construction,  and  furnish  the  labor  and  executive  ability  to  carry 
it  out.  The  lack  of  artistic  skill  among  those  concerned  in  landscape 
construction  cannot  fairly  be  called  the  fault  of  the  contractor.  He  is 
a  business  man,  and  could  hardly  be  expected  to  be  also  a  designer. 
Some  landscape  contractors  have  work  enough  to  afford  to  keep  in 
their  employ  superintendents  and  even  workmen  of  real  artistic  skill, 
but  most  men  who  have  artistic  perception  prefer  to  exercise  it  as  de- 


352 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

signers  or  draftsmen  rather  than  in  the  actual  operations  of  grading, 
planting,  masonry  construction,  and  so  on. 

Still  it  is  vitally  necessary  for  the  success  and  reputation  of  the 
landscape  architect  that  those  things  which  require  skill  and  apprecia- 
tion during  their  final  construction  should  be  intrusted  to  skilled  work- 
men, while,  as  a  matter  of  business,  the  total  work  of  construction 
should  be  so  organized  that  at  the  same  time  the  unskilled  labor  may 
be  employed  at  those  straightforward  and  simple  things  at  which  it  is 
efficient.  From  the  point  of  view  of  the  proper  utilization  of  labor  of 
different  kinds  to  a  definite  end,  any  experienced  landscape  contractor 
might  be  presumed  to  be  sufficiently  competent,  or  at  any  rate,  the 
contract  may  be  so  drawn,  that  if  he  is  not,  the  loss  is  largely  his.  From 
the  point  of  view  of  esthetic  effect,  however,  as  we  have  seen,  there  are 
very  few  landscape  contractors  whose  own  perceptions  can  be  trusted 
far.  Since  it  is  utterly  impossible  in  a  great  deal  of  landscape  work  so 
to  draw  plans  and  specifications  that  a  certain  definite  esthetic  effect 
will  be  the  result  of  their  mechanical  execution,  it  is  necessary  for  the 
landscape  architect  to  have  some  one  on  the  ground,  whose  esthetic 
appreciation,  guided  by  the  plans,  will  enable  him  properly  to  under- 
stand the  result  desired,  and  whose  practical  experience  will  tell  him 
what  allowances  and  modifications  should  be  made  on  account  of  the 
particular  local  conditions.  It  often  happens  that  the  superintendent 
from  the  landscape  architect's  office  actually  himself  organizes  and 
directs  the  work  of  planting,  if  indeed  he  does  not  do  some  of  the  setting 
out  of  the  plants  with  his  own  hands.  In  the  same  way  he  probably 
will  personally  direct  any  difficult  modulation  of  the  surface  of  the 
ground  in  grading,  because  in  no  other  way  can  he  convey  his  ideas 
accurately  enough  to  get  the  result  which  is  desired.  It  is  usually  pos- 
sible in  consultation  with  the  contractor,  to  arrange  the  work  so  that 
this  expert  superintendence  will  not  be  required  at  all  times,  but  it  is 
quite  impossible  to  forestall  the  chance  of  its  being  required  at  any 
time.  If  the  landscape  architect  really  means  to  do  the  best  his  cir- 
cumstances allow  on  any  given  job,  he  must  provide  for  this  expert 
superintendence  or  at  least  for  its  availability  at  short  notice  constantly 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  the  work.  If  the  landscape  architect 
does  all  this  superintending  himself,  it  is  plain  that  he  cannot  carry  on 


APPENDIX  353 

many  jobs  at  the  same  time.  If  he  has  work  of  importance  in  widely 
scattered  localities,  he  must  have  a  resident  superintendent  on  each 
job,  at  least  during  certain  periods  in  the  construction.  The  landscape 
architect  is  fortunate  who  has  his  work  come  to  him  in  such  a  way  that 
this  superintendence  may  be  distributed  throughout  the  year,  or  who 
has  so  versatile  a  corps  of  assistants  that  they  can  turn  their  hand  to 
drafting  or  superintendence  as  the  work  may  demand.* 

It  is  evident  that  the  amount  of  detail  that  is  expressed  on  plan  and 
committed  to  writing,  and  the  amount  of  detail  which  is  left  to  be  deter- 
mined by  the  superintendent,  depends  on  the  possibility  of  deciding 
on  this  detail  definitely  beforehand,  and  on  the  capacity  of  the  super- 
intendent. In  France  and  to  some  extent  in  England,  a  landscape 
architect's  office  is  likely  to  make  fewer  and  less  definite  plans  than  we 
do,  and  to  trust  more  to  skilled  superintendence.  When  the  growth 
of  the  profession  in  this  country  has  produced  more  contractors  skilled 
in  this  particular  kind  of  work,  and  more  men  qualified  to  serve  the 
landscape  architect  as  skilled  superintendents,  the  problem  of  the  execu- 
tion of  work  may  be  somewhat  simplified,  but  it  will  always  be  true 
that  if  the  landscape  architect  wishes  to  see  his  ideas  fully  realized  in 
execution,  he  must  to  some  degree  superintend  this  execution  himself. 

Very  rarely  is  the  landscape  architect's  work  such  that  it  produces  Superiniend- 
the  effect  he  desires  when  the  work  of  construction  and  planting  called  ^^^  "/  ^J'^^'"-- 
for  in  the  contract  is  finished.  The  growth  of  trees  and  flowers  and 
turf  must  still  be  awaited  before  the  result  is  complete,  and  skilled 
superintendence  will  still  be  necessary  to  guide  this  growth  to  the 
desired  end.  It  is  an  excellent  arrangement,  therefore,  if  it  can  be 
provided  that  the  landscape  architect  be  retained  by  the  client  to 
watch  over  the  work,  at  least  until  such  time  as  the  idea  of  the  designer 
has  so  nearly  reached  its  full  expression  that  the  client  may  thoroughly 
grasp  it  and  be  perhaps  trusted  to  see  that  this  expression  is  not  there- 
after destroyed.  If,  as  is  the  case  in  public  work,  there  is  no  one  owner 
who  can  thus  be  trusted,  it  is  vitally  necessary  that  the  esthetic  ability 
to  appreciate  the  design  and  the  enthusiasm  to  maintain  it  should  con- 
tinually reside  in  some  responsible  hands. 

*  Cf.  p.  335. 
2a 


DRAWINGS  TO  ACCOA/[PANY  APPENDIX,   PART  II 

Typical  Drawings  for  a  Landscape  Job  : 
Plans  for  the  Development  of  a  Suburban  Estate 

While  these  plans,  with  the  exception  of  Drawing  XXXVII,  have  been 
re-drawn  in  order  that  the  figures  upon  them  may  be  legible  at  the  reduced 
scale  at  which  they  are  shown,  they  are  otherwise  such  drawings  as  might 
be  prepared  in  the  office  of  a  reasonably  efficient  landscape  architect  during 
the  progress  of  a  piece  of  work  of  this  kind. 

In  many  cases  it  would  be  desirable,  where  the  topographic  map  was 
prepared  from  elevations  taken  on  the  corners  of  cross-section  squares,  to 
show  these  points  with  their  elevations  on  the  topographic  map  for  greater 
accuracy.  In  this  case,  however,  the  contours,  together  with  the  elevations 
of  the  ground  at  the  foot  of  every  tree  —  which  were  given  on  the  original 
map  —  were  sufficient  for  the  use  of  the  designer.  Further  detail  in  regard 
to  the  boulevard  would  have  been  given  if  it  had  not  been  certain  from  the 
first  that  there  would  be  no  road  entrance  on  this  side  of  the  property. 

The  grading  plan  with  its  accompanying  profile  would  be  used  directly, 
in  connection  with  the  specifications  and  the  interpretation  of  these  by  the 
representative  of  the  landscape  architect  on  the  ground,  in  the  grading, 
removal  of  trees  and  shrubs,  preparation  of  the  soil,  construction  of  roads 
and  paths,  arrangements  for  drainage,  water-supply,  and  lighting  of  the 
grounds,  and  similar  items  of  the  construction.  In  the  case  of  smaller  or 
more  definite  and  detailed  things,  like  buildings  and  steps,  bird  bath,  walls, 
arches,  arrangement  of  paths  in  the  flower  garden,  special  paving  in  pat- 
terns, and  so  on,  the  grading  plan  shows  the  location  and  general  proportions 
of  these  constructions ;  but  special  detailed  plans  at  larger  scale  (no  examples 
of  which  are  given  in  this  book)  would  be  followed  in  their  actual  execution. 

The  planting  plan  shows  the  number  of  plants  to  be  used,  and  in  a  general 
way  their  proposed  locations  on  the  ground.  The  planting  in  definite  small 
areas,  formal  or  informal,  like  the  flower  garden,  the  vicinity  of  the  bird 
bath,  the  steps  to  the  boulevard,  would  be  shown  in  more  detail  on  the  plant- 
ing plans  at  larger  scale.  The  actual  arrangement  of  the  plants,  however, 
the  blending  of  one  plant  group  into  another,  the  whole  study  of  the  detailed 
relation  of  the  plants  to  produce  exactly  the  effect  desired,  under  the  par- 
ticular local  circumstances  as  they  develop  and  with  the  particular  stock  as 
it  is  delivered  from  the  nursery,  all  this  is  a  matter  of  judgment  in  design  on 
the  part  of  the  superintendent,  and  cannot  be  recorded  on  plan. 

3SS 


356 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

The  planting  list  which  accompanies  the  planting  plan  is  not  in  the  form 
in  which  it  would  be  if  it  were  to  be  used  in  an  actual  piece  of  work  handled  by  a 
landscape  architect's  office.  A  list  so  used  would  ordinarily  show  the  kinds  of 
plants,  the  quantity  of  plants  in  each  bed,  the  total  quantity  of  each  kind 
of  plant,  the  spacing,  the  size  and  condition,  the  nursery  at  which  the  stock 
was  obtained,  the  unit  price,  and  the  total  cost,  together  with  such  notes  as 
would  be  of  further  use  in  ordering  the  plants  and  in  setting  them  out.  In 
connection  with  the  plan  the  list  herewith,  showing  only  the  kinds  of  plants, 
gives,  for  what  they  may  be  worth,  the  ideas  of  one  designer  as  to  certain 
effects  in  planting  as  they  worked  out  in  this  instance  under  the  local  con- 
ditions. 


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31: 


LIST  OF   PLANTS* 


To  Accompany  Planting  Plan  for  a  Suburban  Estate 
NEAR  Boston,  Mass. 


1  Tsuga  canadensis 
Common  Hemlock 

2  Pinus  Strobus 
White  Pine 

3  Pinus  resinosa 
Red  Pine 

4  Juniperus  virginiana 
Red  Cedar 

5  Abies  concolor 
White  Fir 

5a  Abies  concolor 

White  Fir  (larger  trees) 

6  Pinus  nigra  austriaca 
Austrian  Pine 

7  Picea  canadensis 
White  Spruce 

8  Pseudotsuga  Douglasii 
Douglas  Spruce 

9  Abies  Nordmanniana 
Nordmann's  Fir 

ID     Retinispora  plumosa 

Plumed  Japanese  Cypress 

11  Retinispora  plumosa 

aurea 
Golden  Plumed  Japanese 
Cypress 

12  Retinispora  squarrosa 
Veitch's  Japanese  Cypress 

13  Thuya  occidentalis 
Arbor  Vitje 

14  Picea  Engelmannii 
Engelmann's  Spruce 

15  Salix  vitellina  aurea 
Golden-barked  Willow 

16  Salix  pentandra 
Laurel-leaved  Willow 


17  Betula  papyrifera 
Canoe  Birch 

18  Ulmus  americana 
American  Elm 

19  Platanus  orientalis 
Oriental  Plane 

20  Quercus  rubra 
Red  Oak 

21  Ulmus  campestris 
English  Elm 

22  Betula  lutea 
Yellow  Birch 

23  Eleagnus  argentea 
Silver  Thorn 

24  Calycanthus  floridus 
Carolina  Allspice 

25  Cornus  mas 
Cornelian  Cherry 

26  Berberis  Thunbergii 
Japanese  Barberry 

27  Azalea  gandavensis  sanguinea 
Ghent  Azalea,  Red 

28  Azalea  nudiflora 
Pinxter  Flower 

29  Azalea  lutea 
Flame  Azalea 

30  Azalea  viscosa 
Swamp  Pink 

31  Azalea  amcena 
Chinese  Azalea 

32  Stephanandra  flexuosa 
Stephanandra 

33  Weigela  Kosteriana  variegata 
Variegated  Weigela 

34  Berberis  vulgaris  purpurea 
Purple  Barberry 


*  These  plant  names  follow  the  J917  Official  Code  of  Standardized  Plant  Names 
adopted  by  the  American  Joint  Committee  on  Horticultural  Nomenclature. 

357 


358 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


35  Berberis  vulgaris 
Common  Barberry 

36  Viburnum  acerifolium 
Maple-leaved  Viburnum 

37  Cornus  Amomum 
Silky  Cornel 

38  Viburnum  dentatum 
Arrow  Wood 

39  Hamamelis  virginiana 
Witch  Hazel 

40  Comptonia  asplenifolia 
Sweet  Fern 

41  Myrica  carolinensis 
Bayberry 

42  Hibiscus  syriacus 
Rose  of  Sharon 

43  Weigela  rosea 
Pink  Weigela 

44  Cornus  paniculata 
Gray  Dogwood 

45  Aronia  arbutifolia 
Red  Chokeberry 

46  Rosa  Carolina 
Swamp  Rose 

47  Rosa  rugosa 
Ramanas  Rose 

48  Rosa  lucida 
Dwarf  Wild  Rose 

49  Viburnum  tomentosum  pli- 

catum 
Japan  Snowball 

50  Acanthopanax  pentaphyllum 
Five-leaved  Aralia 

51  Magnolia  Soulangeana 
Soulange's  Magnolia 

52  Magnolia  stellata 
Hall's  Magnolia 

53  Ptelea  trifoliata  aurea 
Golden  Hop  Tree 

54  Acer  palmatum  atropurpu- 

reum  dissectum 
Red  Cut-leaved  Japanese  Maple 

55  Taxus  cuspidata 
Japanese  Yew 

56  Pinus  montana  Mughus 
Dwarf  Mountain  Pine 


57  Juniperus  communis  prostrata 
Common  Prostrate  Juniper 

58  Juniperus  communis  aurea 
Golden  Juniper 

59  Juniperus  Sabina  tamariscifolia 
Savin  Juniper 

60  Thuja  occidentalis  globosa 
Globe  Arbor  Vitse 

61  Ilex  crenata 
Japanese  Holly 

62  Ilex  verticillata 
Winterberry 

63  Pieris  floribunda 
Andromeda 

64  Rhododendron  catawbiense 
Southern  Rhododendron 

65  Rhododendron  catawbiense 

album 
Rhododendron  (White  flow- 
ered) 

66  Rhododendron  maximum 
Great  Laurel 

67  Rhododendron  hybridum,  ever- 

estianum 
Rhododendron  (Lilac  flowered) 

68  Rhododendron  hybridum, 

Charles  Dickens 
Rhododendron    (Crimson   flow- 
ered) 

69  Rhododendron  hybridum, 

Caractacus 
Rhododendron     (Purple     flow- 
ered) 

70  Rhododendron  hybridum. 

President  Lmcoln 
Rhododendron  (Rose  flowered) 

71  Retinispora  obtusa  nana 
Dwarf  Japanese  Cypress 

72  Buxus  sempervirens 
Dwarf  Box 

73  Kalmia  latifolia 
Mountain  Laurel 

74  Cercis  canadensis 
Judas  Tree 

75  Cercidiphyllum  japonicum 
Japanese  Judas  Tree 


LIST    OF    PLANTS 


359 


76  Crataegus  Oxyacantha  Pauli 
Double  Scarlet  Thorn 

77  Cratjegus  coccinea 
American  White  Thorn 

78  Cratxgus  Crus-galli 
Cockspur  Thorn 

79  Cratsegus  cordata 
Washington  Thorn 

80  Crataegus  Oxyacantha 
Common  Hawthorn 

81  Amelanchier  canadensis 
Shad  Bush 

82  Halesia  tetraptera 
Silver  Bell 

83  Cornus  florida 
Flowering  Dogwood 

84  Cornus  florida  rubra 
Red  Flowering  Dogwood 

85  Syringa  persica 
Persian  Lilac 

86  Malus  Parkmanii 
Parkman's  Crab 

87  Prunus  Amygdalus  rosea  plena 
Double-flowering  Almond 

88  Amygdalus  triloba 
Double-flowering  Plum 

89  Prunus  serrulata 
Japanese  Flowering  Cherry 

90  Malus  floribunda 
Flowering  Crab 

91  Philadelphus  coronarius  aureus 
Golden  Alock  Orange 

92  Ligustrum  amurense 
Amoor  River  Privet 

93  Deutzia  Lemoinei 
Lemoine's  Deutzia 

94  Spirsea  \"anhouttei 
Van  Houtte's  Spirsea 

95  Ligustrum  Ibota 
Chinese  Privet 

96  Syringa  vulgaris 
Common  Lilac 

97  Forsythia  suspensa 
Drooping  Golden  Bell 

98  Lonicera  bella  albida 
White  Bush  Honeysuckle 


99     Rhodotypus  kerrioides 
White  Kerria 

100  Kerria  japonica 
Kerria 

1 01  Syringa  Marie  Legraye 
Hybrid  Lilac  (white) 

102  Symphoricarpus  racemosus 
Snowberry 

103  Forsythia  suspensa  Fortunei 
Fortune's  Golden  Bell 

104  Hypericum  aureum 
Golden  St.  John's  Wort 

105  Weigela  rosea  alba 
White  Weigela 

106  Weigela  hybrida,  Eva  Rathke 
Red  Weigela 

107  Symphoricarpus  vulgaris 
Indian  Currant 

108  Lonicera  tatarica 
Bush  Honeysuckle 

109  Spirsa  Thunbergii 
Thunberg's  Spiraea 

no     \  iburnum  Opulus  sterile 
Common  Snowball 

111  Philadelphus  coronarius 
Mock  Orange 

112  Deutzia  crenata 
Single  Pink  Deutzia 

113  \^iburnum  cassinoides 
Withe  Rod 

114  Rosa  hybrida,  Dorothy  Perkins 
Double  Pink  Climbing  Rose 

115  Wisteria  sinensis  alba 
W^hite  Chinese  Wisteria 

116  Euonymus  radicans  latifolius 
Evergreen  Creeper 

117  Clematis  paniculata 
Panicled  Clematis 

118  Lonicera  japonica  Halleana 
Hall's  Japanese  Honeysuckle 

119  Ampelopsis  tricuspidata  Veitchii 
Boston  Ivy 

120  Hedera  Helix 
English  Ivy 

121  Rosa  hybrida,  Hiawatha 
Single  Red  Climbing  Rose 


360 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Herbaceous  Group  A 

(To  be  planted  in  spaces  as  marked 
on  each  side  of  steps,  and  in  ramps 
and  risers  of  stone  flag  steps  and 
among  rocks  on  bank  along  the 
boulevard,  as  directed  on  the 
ground.) 

Phlox  subulata 
Phlox  subulata  alba 
Vinca  minor 
Vinca  minor  alba 
Euonymus  radicans  latifolius 
Alyssum  saxatile 
Arabis  albida 
Dianthus  plumarius 
Iberis  sempervirens 
Cerastium  tomentosum 
Heuchera  sanguinea 
Houstonia  cserulea 


Herbaceous  Group  D 

Daphne  Cneorum 
Pachysandra  terminalis 
Euonymus  radicans  latifolius 


Herbaceous  Group  E 

Daphne  Cneorum 

Euonymus  radicans  microphyllus 


Herbaceous  Group  F 

(To  be  planted  in  space  as  marked 
and  on  edge  of  shrub  beds  near  by, 
as  determined  on  the  ground.) 

Paeonia  hybrida 
La  Tulipe  (pink) 
Grover  Cleveland  (crimson) 
Festiva  maxima  (white) 


Herbaceous  Group  B 

Aster  alpinus 
Aster  alpinus  albus 
Aster  novi-belgii 
Aster  ptarmicoides 
Campanula  pyramidalis 
Lupinus  polyphyllus 


Herbaceous  Group  C 

Iris  hybrida  alpina,  white 
Iris  hybrida  alpina,  blue 
Iris  laevigata,  Purple  Emperor 
Iris  pumila,  white 
Iris  pumila,  blue 


Herbaceous  Group  G 

Garden  annuals  and  perennials 
Planting  shown  on  detailed  plans  at 
larger  scale 


Herbaceous  Group  H 

Funkia  lancifolia 
Funkia  subcordata 
Convallaria  majalis 
Polygonatum  biflorum 
Smilacina  racemosa 
Ceratostigma  plumbaginoides 
Erythronium  americanum 
Viola  cucullata 
Lilium  canadense 
Lilium  superbum 


I 


SELECTED  LIST  OF 
REFERENCES  ON  LANDSCAPE  ARCHITECTURE 

Bibliography  —  Periodicals  —  General  —  History  and  historic  styles  —  Theory  of  landscape  design  and 
appreciation  —  Landscape  composition  —  Natural  forms  of  ground,  rock,  and  water  —  Vegetation: 
Planting  design  —  Structures  in  relation  to  landscape  —  Types  of  landscape  designs  —  Professional 
practice  —  Construction  and  maintenance. 

On  some  parts  of  the  field  of  landscape  architecture  there  is  a  wealth  of  published  material 
from  which  to  choose,  but  on  others  —  especially  on  the  theory  of  landscape  design  and  on 
landscape  construction  —  there  is  a  striking  dearth  of  literature  of  real  value.  This  condition 
is  reflected  more  or  less  by  the  scale  of  the  subdivisions  of  this  present  list.  The  references 
selected,  however,  present  a  reasonably  comprehensive  view  of  the  subject  of  landscape  archi- 
tecture, —  the  more  so,  in  bringing  forward  single  articles  and  chapters  which  have  not  pre- 
viously appeared  in  bibliographies,  but  which  are  well  worth  the  attention  of  students. 

Practically  all  the  more  important  works  on  landscape  architecture,  and  many  of  the  minor 
ones,  have  been  examined  in  libraries  here  and  abroad ;  and  use  has  been  especially  made  of 
the  comprehensive  bibliography  of  landscape  architecture  which  is  in  preparation  by  the  Library 
of  the  Harvard  School  of  Landscape  Architecture,  based  on  the  Harvard  University  and  Cod- 
man  collections,  and  enlarged  from  all  available  sources.  In  selecting  titles  for  inclusion  in 
the  present  list,  due  consideration  has  been  given  to  books  of  historical  significance;  but,  since 
previous  lists  —  as  noted  in  the  section  bibliography  —  have  particularly  emphasized  the  his- 
torical aspect  of  the  literature  of  our  field,  this  list  endeavors  rather  to  bring  out  predominantly 
titles  of  practical  or  inspirational  value. 

In  the  references  in  the  geographical  subdivisions,  under  estates  and  gardens,  only  modern 
works  or  editions  have  been  included  because  of  their  greater  accessibility;  but  the  value  of 
the  older  and  often  contemporary  books  of  plates  such  as  Falda,  Perelle,  Percier  and  Fontaine, 
or  the  Nouveau  Theatre  de  la  Grande  Bretagne,  should  not  be  overlooked,  and  for  the  titles  of 
these  the  reader  is  referred  to  the  catalogue  of  the  Codman  Collection  mentioned  below. 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

Boston  Public  Library. 

The  Codman  Collection  of  Books  on  Landscape  Gardening.     Also  a  list  of  books 
on  trees  and  foresty.  .  .  .     Boston,  Published  by  the  Trustees,  1899.     26  pages. 
Codman,  Henry  Sargent. 

Bibliography;   a  list  of  works  on  the  art  of  landscape-gardening.     In  Garden  and 
Forest,  Mar.  12,  1890,  v.  3,  p.  131-135. 
Chronologically  arranged. 

361 


362  LANDSCAPE   DESIGN 

Eliot,  Charles. 

A  List  of  Books  on  Landscape  Gardening.     In  Garden  and  Forest,  Apr.  18,  1888, 
V.  I,  p.  94-95-     Also  reprinted  in  Charles  Eliot,  Landscape  Architect,  p.  219-223. 

Chronological  "list  of  books  and  papers  which  have  influenced  or  recorded  the  beginnings  of  the 

modern  art  of  landscape  gardening,"  1625-1834. 

Kimball,  Theodora. 

Books  on  Landscape  Architecture.     In  Landscape  Architecture,  Jan.  1916,  v.  6, 

p.  87-94. 

Contains  a  brief  selected  list  of  books  for  a  private  professional  collection,  and  a  list  of  a  dozen  books 
to  serve  as  an  introduction  to  the  subject  of  landscape  architecture.  ' 

Manning,  Warren  H. 

The  Fugitive  Literature  of  the  Landscape  Art.     In  Billerica,  North  Shore  edition, 
Mar.  1916,  V.  4,  no.  10,  part  2,  p.  4-15. 
Refers  principally  to  periodicals  and  park  reports. 

Van  Rensselaer,  M.  G.  (Mrs.  Schuyler). 

Books  on  Gardening  Art.     In  her  Art  Out-of-doors,  Appendix. 

PERIODICALS 

Garden  and  Forest  ;  a  journal  of  horticulture,  landscape  art,  and  forestry.  Con- 
ducted by  C.  S.  Sargent.  New  York.  Feb.  29,  1888-Dec.  29,  1897.  10  v. 
illus.  plans. 

No  more  published.     Contains  many  discussions  of  theory  and  problems,  during  an    important 

formative  period  in  American  landscape  architecture. 

Die  Gartenkunst;  Zeitschrift  fiir  die  Gesamtinteressen  der  Gartenkunst  und 
Gartentechnik  sowie  der  damit  verwandten  Zweige  des  Gartenbaues,  heraus- 
gegeben  vom  Verein  Deutscher  Gartenkiinstler  .  .  .  Berlin,  Gebriider  Born- 
traeger.     Jan.  1899-Dec.   1915,  v.  1-17.     illus.  plans. 

Issue  interrupted  by  the  war. 

Landscape  Architecture  ;  a  quarterly  magazine.  Harrisburg,  Pa.,  Landscape 
Architecture,  Inc.     Oct.  1910  (v.  i)  to  date,     illus.  plans. 

Edited  by  Charles  Downing  Lay,  Henry  V.  Hubbard,  and  Robert  Wheelwright.     Official  organ  of 
the  American  Society  of  Landscape  Architects. 

GENERAL 

American  Society  of  Landscape  Architects. 

Transactions.     From  its  inception  in   1899  to  the  end  of  1908.     Edited  by   a 
committee  appointed  for  the  purpose :    Harold  A.  Caparn,  James  Sturgis  Pray, 
Downing  Vaux.     [Harrisburg,  Pa.,  1912.]     127  pages,     illus.  plans. 
Includes  papers  read  before  the  Society. 


REFERENCES 3^3 

Andre,  Edouard. 

L'Art  des  Jardins.     Traite  general  de  la  composition  des  pares  et  jardins.     Paris, 
G.  Masson,  1879.     888  pages,     illus.  plans. 
A  comprehensive  treatise  on  design  and  construction. 

Downing,  Andrew  Jackson. 

A  Treatise  on  the  Theory  and  Practice  of  Landscape  Gardening,  adapted  to 
North  America ;    with  a  view  to  the  improvement  of  country  residences.  .  .  . 
New  York,  Wiley  and  Putnam,  1841.     451  pages,     illus.  plans. 
The  6th  edition  (1859)  and  subsequent  ones  contain  a  supplement  by  Henry  Winthrop  Sargent. 

Eliot,  Charles  William. 

Charles  Eliot,  Landscape  Architect,  a  lover  of  nature  and  of  his  kind,  who  trained 
himself  for  a  new  profession,  practised  it  happily  and  through  it  wrought  much 
good.  Boston,  Houghton,  Mifflin  and  Co.,  1902.  770  pages  in  2  v.  or  i.  illus. 
plans.     (Also  later  reprints.) 

A  biography,  including  letters,  professional  papers,  and  reports,  which  contain  discussions  of  general 

theory  and  practice. 

HiRSCHFELD,    CHRISTIAN    CaYUS    LoRENZ. 

Theorie  der  Gartenkunst.     Leipzig,  Weidmann  und  Reich,  1775-1780  and  1779- 
1785.     5  V.     illus.     (French  translation  issued  by  the  same  publishers,  1779-1785.) 
An  extensive  treatise  by  one  of  the  continental  "Landscape  School." 

LouDON,  John  Claudilts. 

An  Encyclopaedia  of  Gardening,  comprising  the  theory  and  practice  of  horti- 
culture, floriculture,  arboriculture,  and  landscape  gardening.  .  .  .  London,  Long- 
man, Hurst,  etc.,  1822.  1469  pages,  illus.  plans.  (Also  many  later  editions, 
from  1850  as  revised  and  improved  by  Mrs.  Loudon.) 

Part  1 :  Gardening  considered  in  respect  to  its  Origin,  Progress,  and  present  State  among  different 
Nations,  Governments,  and  Climates,  treats  the  histor)'  and  theory  of  landscape  design. 

Meyer,  Franz  Sales,  and  Friedrich  Ries. 

Die  Gartenkunst  in  Wort  und  Bild.     Leipzig,  C.  Scholtze,   1904  and  enlarged 
1914.     illus.  plans.     (Published  in  1911  as  Gartentechnik  und  Gartenkunst.) 
Somewhat  similar  in  scope  to  Andre,  although  less  extensive. 

Parsons,  Samuel. 

The  Art  of  Landscape  Architecture;  its  development  and  its  application  to 
modern  landscape  gardening.  New  York,  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  1915.  347 
pages,     illus. 

A  compilation  from  the  older  writers,  arranged  by  subjects,  from  the  point  of  view  of  naturalistic 
design. 

PiJCKLER-MuSKAU,    HERMANN    LuDWIG    HeINRICH,    FuRST   VON. 

Andeutungen  iiber  Landschaftsgartnerei,  verbunden  mit  der  Beschreibung  ihrer 


364 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

praktischen  Anwendung  in  Muskau.  Stuttgart,  Hallberger,  1834.  16°  text 
and  folio  atlas,  including  plans.     (Also  later  editions.) 

Considerable  portions  are  translated  in  Samuel  Parsons'  Art  of  Landscape  Architecture.  A  complete 
English  translation  edited  by  Mr.  Parsons  with  selected  illustrations  is  being  published  by  the 
Houghton,  Mifflin  Company  of  Boston.  There  is  also  an  earlier  manuscript  translation  in  the 
Codman  Collection  at  the  Boston  Public  Library. 

Repton,  Humphrey. 

Sketches  and  Hints  on  Landscape  Gardening.  Collected  from  designs  and  ob- 
servations now  in  the  possession  of  the  different  noblemen  and  gentlemen,  for 
whose  use  they  were  originally  made.  The  whole  tending  to  establish  fixed 
principles  in  the  art  of  laying  out  ground.  London,  Printed  by  W.  Bulmer  and 
Co.  [1794]  83  pages  and  xvi  plates,  with  movable  slips  showing  present  and 
proposed  conditions. 


Observations  on  the  Theory  and  Practice  of  Landscape  Gardening.  .  .  .     Lon- 
don, Printed  for  J.  Taylor,   1803.     222  pages,     illus.,  including  plates  similar 
to  above. 
Both  the  Sketches  and  Observations  are  included  with  Repton's  other  works  in  a  one-volume  edition 
(1840)  by  J.  C.  Loudon.     A  briefer  American  edition  prepared  by  John  Nolen  appeared  in  1907. 

Van  Rensselaer,  M.  G.  (Mrs.  Schuyler). 

Art  Out-of-doors.     Hints  on  good  taste  in  gardening.     New  York,  C.  Scribner's 
Sons,  1893.     399  pages.     (Also  later  reprints.) 
Written  to  stimulate  a  more  general  appreciation  of  the  landscape  art. 

Whately,  Thomas. 

Observations  on  Modern  Gardening.     Published  anonymously,  London,   1770. 
(Several  later  editions.     Also  translated  into  French.) 
Called  the  first  systematic  treatise  on  the  subject. 

HISTORY  AND  HISTORIC  STYLES 

Amherst,  Hon.  Alicia. 

A  History  of  Gardening  in  England.     London,  B.  Quaritch,  1895.     400  pages, 
illus.  plans.     (Also  later  editions.) 
Contains  a  chronological  list  of  books  on  English  gardening. 

Chambers,  Sir  William. 

A  Dissertation  on  Oriental  Gardening.  London,  Printed  by  W.  Griffin,  1772. 
94  pages.  (Also  a  2d  edition,  to  which  is  annexed  an  explanatory  discourse  by 
Tan  Chet-qua,  of  Quang-chew-fu,  Gent.     Also  French  and  German  translations.) 

Relates  to  Chinese  landscape  gardening.     It  has  been  alleged  that  this  book  was  written  partly 
as  a  solemn  joke  at  the  expense  of  the  enthusiastic  Landscapists  of  the  day. 


REFERENCES  365 

CONDER,    JOSIAH. 

Landscape  Gardening  in  Japan.     Tokio,  Kelly  and  Walsh,  1893.     161  pages. 

illus.     xxxvii  plates. 

Supplement.     With  collotypes  by  K.  Ogawa,  1893.     xl  plates. 
FouQuiER,  Marcel. 

De  I'Art  des  Jardins  du  XV*  au  XX'  siecle.     Paris,  E.  Paul,  191 1.     254  pages. 

illus.  plans. 

Primarily  on  gardens  in  the  style  of  Le  Notre  in  France  and  other  countries. 
GOTHEIN,    A-IaRIE    LuiSE. 

Geschichte  der  Gartenkunst.  Herausgeg.  mit  Unterstiitzung  der  Koniglichen 
Akademie  des  Bauwesens  in  Berlin.  Jena,  E.  Diederichs,  1914.  2  v.  illus. 
plans. 

Supersedes  all  other  general  histories  of  landscape  architecture.     Rich  in  illustrations  and  references. 

Johnson,  George  W.     _ 

A  History  of  English  Gardening,  chronological,  biographical,  literary,  and  criti- 
cal. .  .  .     London,  Baldwin  &  Cradock,  etc.,  1829.     445  pages. 

Koch,  Hugo. 

Sachsische  Gartenkunst.  Berlin,  Deutsche  Bauzeitung,  1910.  410  pages, 
illus.  plans. 

Nichols,  Rose  St.a.ndish. 

English  Pleasure  Gardens.  .  .  .  New  York,  The  Macmillan  Co.,  1902.  324 
pages,     illus.  plans. 

Includes  an  historical  survey  of  ancient,  medieval,  and  later  European  gardens,  to  show  their  in- 
fluence in  England. 

Sieveking,  Albert  Forbes,  editor. 

Gardens  Ancient  and  Modern.     London,  J.  M.  Dent,  1885.     (Also  published  in 
1899  as:    The  Praise  of  Gardens.     423  pages,     illus.  plans.) 
Selections  from  literature  on  gardens  arranged  chronologically  with  a  brief  historical  review. 

Stein,  Henri. 

Les  Jardins  de  France  des  origines  a  la  fin  du  X\'nP  siecle  .  .  .  reproductions 

d'apres  des  estampes  anciennes  et  des  documents  originaux  inedits.     Paris,  D.-A. 

Longuet,  preface  dated  191 3.     23  pages  and  104  plates,  including  plans. 
Stuart,  C.  ^L  Villiers. 

Gardens  of  the  great  Mughals.     London,  A.  and  C.  Black,   1913.     290  pages. 

illus.  plans. 
Historical  and  descriptive. 

Sypesteyn,  C.  H.  C.  a.  van. 

Oud-Nederlandsche  Tuinkunst;  geschiedkundig  overzicht  van  de  Nederlandsche 
tuinarchitectuur  van  de  15"^«  tot  de  19"^  eeuw.  'S.-Gravenhage,  M.  Nijhoff, 
1910.     339  pages,     illus. 


366 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

Tabor,  Grace. 

Old-fashioned  Gardening ;  a  history  and  a  reconstruction.     New  York,  McBride, 
Nast  &  Co.,  1913.     263  pages,     illus. 
On  American  colonial  gardens. 

Triggs,  H.  Inigo. 

Garden  Craft  in  Europe.     London,  B.  T.  Batsford,  1913.      332    pages,      illus. 
plans. 

Includes  Dutch  and  Spanish  gardens  as  well  as  Italian,  English,  and  French,  which  have  a  more 

extended  special  literature  of  their  own. 

Van  Rensselaer,  M.  G.  (Mrs.  Schuyler). 

The  Art  of  Gardening:    an  historical  sketch.     In  Garden  and  Forest,  a  series  of 
twenty-one  articles  beginning  Mar.  20,  1889,  in  v.  2,  and  ending  June  11,  1890, 
in  V.  3. 
On  ancient,  medieval,  and  Mohammedan  gardens. 


THEORY  OF   LANDSCAPE   DESIGN  AND  APPRECIATION 

Abel,  Lothar. 

Aesthetik  der  Garten-Kunst.     Als  Manuscript  gedruckt.     Wien,  1877.     62  pages, 
illus. 
Note  especially:  Der  Begriff  des  Styles,  p.  20-23. 

Andre,  Edouard. 

L'Art  des  Jardins.     1879. 

Esthetique.     Ch.  IV,  p.  91-103. 
Du  Sentiment  de  la  Nature.     Ch.  V,  p.  104-119. 
Des  Genres.  —  Des  Scenes.  —  Du  Style.     In  Ch.  VI,  p.  136-152. 
Cope,  Walter. 

The  Relation  of  Natural  to  Artificial  Beauty  in   Landscape.     In  House  and 
Garden,  Dec.  1902,  v.  2,  p.  595-611. 
Eliot,  Charles. 

What  would  be  Fair  must  first  be  Fit.     In  Garden  and  Forest,  Apr.  i,  1896,  v.  9, 
p.  132-133.     Also  reprinted  in  Charles  Eliot,  Landscape  Architect,  p.  549-553. 
Eliot,  Charles  William. 

Need  of  conserving  the  Beauty  and  Freedom  of  Nature  in  Modern  Life.     In 
National  Geographic  Magazine,  July  1914,  v.  26,  p.  67-73. 
Hamerton,  Philip  Gilbert. 

Landscape.     With  original  etchings  and  many  illustrations  from  pictures  and 
drawings.     London,  Seeley  &  Co.,  1885.     386  pages.     (Also  a  smaller  unillus- 
trated  American  edition,  1890.) 
On  landscape  appreciation. 


REFERENCES 367 

Loudon,  John  Claudius. 

Influence  of  Climate  and  Manners  on  Gardening,  as  an  Art  of  Design  and  Taste. 
In  his  Encyclopcedia  of  Gardening,  Part  I,  Book  II,  Section  II. 

Marcus,  Hugo. 

Die  ornamentale  Schonheit  der  Landschaft.     (See  under  Landscape  Composi- 
tion.) 

MiGGE,    LebERECHT. 

Die  Gartenkultur  des  20.  Jahrhunderts.     Jena,  E.  Diederich,  1913.     161  pages, 
illus.  plans. 

In  behalf  of  the  socialization  of  Gartenkunst  and  the  development  of  a  Gartenkultur.     See  Review  in 
Lartdscape  Architecture,  Oct.  1914. 

Parsons,  S.4muel. 

The  Art  of  Landscape  Architecture.     (See  under  General.) 
The  introduction  quotes  numerous  passages  in  support  of  naturalistic  design. 

Price,  Sir  Uvedale. 

An  Essay  on  the  Picturesque,  as  compared  with  the  Sublime  and  the  Beautiful  ; 

and,  on  the  use  of  studying  pictures,  for  the  purpose  of  improving  real  landscape. 

London,  Printed  for  J.  Robson,  1794-1798.     2  v.     (Also  several  later  editions, 

with  additions.) 
Repton,  Humphrey. 

Ancient  and  Modern  Gardening ;   Change  of  Style.     In  his  Observations  on  the 

Theory  and  Practice  of  Landscape  Gardening,  Ch.  X. 
Schneider,  Camillo  Karl. 

Landschaftliche  Gartengestaltung.     Insbesondere  iiber  die  Kiinstlerische  Ver- 

wertung  natiirlicher  Vegetationsvorbilder  in  den  Werken  der  Gartenkunst  und 

mit  einem  Beitrag  iiber  Heimatschutz  und  Landesverschonerung.     Leipzig,  C. 

Scholtze,  1907.     250  pages,     illus. 
Shaler,  Nathaniel  Southgate. 

The  Beauty  of  the  Earth.     In  his  Man  and  the  Earth,  New  York,  Fox,  Duffield  & 

Co.,  1905  (and  later),  Ch.  X. 


The  Landscape  as  a  Means  of  Culture.     In  Atlantic  Monthly,  Dec.  1898,  v.  82, 
p.  777-785- 
Quotations  from  this  article  are  given,  Chapter  II,  p.  12-13  ""''■ 

Sitwell,  Sir  George. 

An  Essay  on  the  Making  of  Gardens,  being  a  study  of  old  Italian  gardens,  of  the 
nature  of  beauty,  and  the  principles  involved  in  garden  design.     London,  J. 
Murray,  1909.     109  pages. 
A  quotation  from  this  book  is  given,  Chapter  II,  p.  1 1  anu. 


368  LANDSCAPE   DESIGN 

LANDSCAPE  COMPOSITION 

Andre,  Edouard. 

L'Art  des  Jardins,  1879. 

Principes  Generaux  de  la   Composition  des  Jardins.     Ch.  VI,  especially  p. 

120-136.     illus. 
Vues  et  Percees.     In  Ch.  X,  p.  321-345.     illus. 
Caparn,  Harold  A. 

Composition  in  Landscape  Art.     In  Garden  and  Forest,  Dec.  20, 1893,  v.  6,  p.  522- 

523- 
Discusses  the  lessons  of  landscape  paintings  and  the  methods  of  landscape  painters  for  the  landscape 
designer. 

GiRARDiN,  Rene  Louis,  Marquis  de. 

De  la  Composition  du  Paysage ;  ou  des  moyens  d'embellir  la  nature  autour  des 
habitations.  Paris,  Delaquette,  1771.  (Translated  into  English  as:  Jn  Essay 
on  Landscape,  London,  Printed  for  J.  Dodsley,  1783.  160  pages.  Also  later 
French  editions  and  an  Italian  translation.) 
Composition  of  the  landscape  in  accordance  with  ideas  drawn  from  the  art  of  landscape  painting, 
which  M.  de  Girardin  applied  in  his  estate  of  Ermenonville. 

Jones,  Beatrix. 

The  Garden  as  a  Picture.     In  Scribner's  Magazine,  July  1907,  v.  42,  p.  2-1 1. 
Koch,  Hugo. 

Der  optische  Maszstab  in  der  Gartenkunst.  In  Gartenkunst,  Feb.  and  Apr.  1915, 
V.  17,  p.  17-18  and  52-55. 

Discusses  the  size  and  location  of  objects  in  landscape  composition  in  relation  to  the  points  of  view 
from  which  they  are  to  be  seen. 

Marcus,  Hugo. 

Die  ornamentale  Schonheit  der  Landschaft  und  der  Natur  :  als  Beitrag  zu  einer 
allegemeinen  Asthetik  der  Landschaft  und  der  Natur.  Miinchen,  R.  Piper  &  Co., 
1912.     151  pages,     illus. 

Especially  interesting  on  the  composition  of  landscape  forms  and  on  the  modes  of  order  in  landscape 

composition. 

Price,  Sir  Uvedale. 

An  Essay  on  the  Picturesque.     (See  under  Theory.) 

Repton,  Humphrey. 

The  Affinity  betwixt  Painting  and  Gardening.  In  his  Sketches  and  Hints  on 
Landscape  Gardening,  part  of  Ch.  VII.     (Ch.  VIII  in  Nolen  edition.) 


REFERENC  ES  3^9 

NATUILA.L  FORMS  OF  GROUND,   ROCK,   AND   WATER 

Andre,  Edouard. 

L'Art  des  Jardins,  1879. 

Les  Eaux.     In  Ch.  X,  p.  437-47°-     il'us. 
Les  Rochers.     In  Ch.  X,  p.  486-521.     illus. 
Marr,  John  E. 

The  Scientific  Study  of  Scenery.     London,  Methuen  &  Co.,  1900.     368  pages. 

illus. 

Physiography  with  especial  attention  to  the  visual  aspect  of  land  and  water  forms. 

Olmsted,  John  Charles. 

The  Treatment  of  Slopes  and  Banks.     In  Garden  and  Forest,  Sept.  5,  1888,  v.  I, 
p.  326-327. 

Illustrated  with  sections  of  good  and  bad  slopes. 

Parsons,  Samuel. 

The  Art  of  Landscape  Architecture,  191 5. 

Water.  —  Islands.     Ch.  VIII   and  IX,  p.   145-169.     illus.     Also  note  plates 

from  Piickler-Muskau,  opp.  p.  202  and  204. 
Grading  and  Shaping  Grounds.     Ch.  XI,  p.  184-199. 
Shaler,  Nathaniel  Southgate. 

Outlines  of  the  Earth's  History ;  a  popular  study  in  physiography.     New  York, 
D.  Appleton  and  Co.,  1898.     417  pages,     illus. 
The  origins  of  land  and  water  forms. 


Sea  and  Land.     New  York,  C.  Scribner's  Sons,  1894.     252  pages,     illus. 
Sea  and  land.     p.  1-37- 
Sea-beaches,     p.  38-74. 

VEGETATION.     PLANTING  DESIGN 

Architecture  and  Vines.     In  Garden  and  Forest,  June  20,  1894,  v.  7,  p.  241-242. 
The  Artistic  Aspect  of  Trees.     In  Garden  and  Forest,  a  series  of  seven  articles,  be- 
ginning July  4,  1888,  in  V.  i,  and  ending  May  8,  1889,  in  v.  2. 
Form,  texture,  and  color  are  considered  each  in  an  article. 

Bailey,  Liberty  Hyde. 

The  Standard  Cyclopedia  of  Horticulture;  a  discussion,  for  the  amateur,  and 
the  professional  and  commercial  grower,  of  the  kinds,  characteristics  and  methods 
of  cultivation  of  the  species  of  plants  grown  in  the  regions  of  the  United  States 
and  Canada,  for  ornament,  for  fancy,  for  fruit,  and  for  vegetables;  with  keys  to 
the  natural  families  and  genera,  descriptions  of  the  horticultural  capabilities  of 


370 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

the  states    and    provinces.  .  .  .     New  York,  The   Macmillan  Co.,   1914-1917. 
6  V.     illus.  plans.     (Replaces  earlier  editions.) 

Note  in  V.  5  the  articles  under  the  heading  Planting,  which  deal  with  various  aspects  of  planting 
design,  and  also  other  special  articles  by  well-known  landscape  architects  on  topics  in  the  field  of 
landscape  design. 

Caparn,  Harold  A. 

Carpet  Bedding.     In  Garden  and  Forest,  Sept.  26,  1894,  v.  7,  p.  382-383. 
Curtis,  Charles  H.,  and  W.  Gibson. 

The  Book  of  Topiary.     London,  J.  Lane,  1904.      80  pages,     illus. 

Both  historical  and  practical. 

Downing,  Andrew  Jackson. 

Wood  and  Plantations.     In  his  Treatise  on  the  Theory  and  Practice  of  Landscape 
Gardening,  Section  III. 
Note  the  discussion  under  the  topic :  Classification  of  Trees  as  to  Expression. 

Eliot,  Charles. 

Anglomania  in  Park  Making.     In  Charles  Eliot,  Landscape  Architect,  p.  215-218. 
Planting  in  relation  to  landscape  character. 

Fernow,  Bernhard  E. 

The  Care  of  Trees  in  Lawn,  Street  and  Park,  with  a  list  of  trees  and  shrubs  for 
decorative  use.     New  York,  H.   Holt  &   Co.,   1910.     392  pages,     illus.     (Also 
later  reprints.) 
Note  especially  Ch.  VIII,  Esthetic  Forestry. 

Gilpin,  Rev.  William. 

Remarks  on  Forest  Scenery,  and  other  woodland  views,  (relative  chiefly  to  pic- 
turesque beauty)   illustrated  by  the  scenes  of  New-Forest  in  Hampshire.  .  .  . 
London,  Printed  for  R.  Blamire,  1791.     2  v.     illus. 
On  the  characteristics  of  trees  and  their  composition  in  groups  and  woodlands. 

How  to  Mask  the  Foundations  of  a  Country  House.     In  Garden  and  Forest,  1889, 
v.  2,  a  series  of  four  articles  beginning  July  24  and  ending  Aug.  28. 

Jekyll,  Gertrude. 

Colour   in   the   Flower  Garden.     London,   "Country   Life,"    1908.     148   pages, 
illus.    plans.     (The   "Country   Life"   Library.)     Also   later  reprints,   of   which 
that  of  1914  is  called  :   Colour  Schemes  for  the  Flower  Garden. 
Excellent  on  the  informal  grouping  of  plants.  . 


Wall  and  Water  Gardens.     London,  G.  Newnes ;  New  York,  C.  Scribner's  Sons, 
1901.     177  pages,     illus.     (The  "Country  Life"  Library.)     Also  later  reprints. 
Kennion,  Edward. 

An  Essay  on  Trees  in  Landscape ;   or  an  attempt  to  shew  the  propriety  and  im- 
portance of  characteristic  expression  in  this  branch  of  art,  and  the  means  of 


REFERENC  ES sjl 

producing  it :  with  examples.  London,  Printed  by  T.  Bensley,  for  C.  J.  Kennion, 
1815.     48  pages,  and  plates. 

Of  value  for  its  discussion  of  the  natural  character  of  trees  as  expressed  in  their  method  of  growth 
as  well  as  for  the  drawing  of  trees. 

Loudon,  John  Claudius. 

Observations  on  the  Formation  and  Management  of  Useful  and  Ornamental 
Plantations;  on  the  Theory  and  Practice  of  Landscape  Gardening.  .  .  .  Edin- 
burgh, A.  Constable  &  Co.,  1804.     342  pages,     illus. 

Note  especially :  — 

Section   II.     Of  the  Characteristic  Distinction  and  Particular  Properties  of  Trees  and  Shrubs. 

Section  III.     On  the  Arrangement  of  Trees  and  Shrubs.     (Especially  remarks  on  color.) 

Section  IV.     Of  the  Disposition  of  Wood,  with  respect  to  the  surface  of  the  grounds  about  a  place, 

and  the  general  surface  of  the  country. 

Miller,  Wilhelm. 

What  England  can  teach  us  about  Gardening.     Garden  City,  N.  Y.,  Doubleday, 
Page  &  Co.,  1911.     359  pages,     illus. 
Enlarged  and  revised  from  articles  in  Country  Life  in  Jmrrica  and  Garden  Magazine. 

Olmsted,  John  Charles. 

Hints  about  Lawns.     In  Garden  and  Forest,  Jan.  23,  1889,  v.  2,  p.  38. 

Lawns  considered  as  design  units. 

Parsons,  Samuel. 

Plantations.     In  his  jirt  of  Landscape  Architecture,  Ch.  XII,  p.  200-225.     illus. 

Contains  several  quotations  from  sources  referred  to  in  this  section  of  the  bibliography. 

Robinson,  William. 

The  English  Flower  Garden.  .  .  .  London,  J.  Murray,  originally  published  1883. 
Many  subsequent  editions,  revised  and  enlarged,  with  varying  titles,     illus. 

Design  and  arrangement,  with  descriptions  of  trees,  shrubs,  and  herbaceous  plants.  The  source  of 
inspiration  of  much  of  the  modern  appreciation  of  naturalistic  garden  planting  in  England  and  this 
country. 

Salisch,  Heinrich  von. 

Forstasthetik.     Dritte,    vermehrte    Auflage.     Berlin,    J.    Springer,    1911.     434 

pages,     illus. 
Sedgwick,  Mrs.  Mabel  Cabot.     Assisted  by  Robert  Cameron. 

The  Garden  Month  by  Month  ;   describing  the  appearance,  color,  dates  of  bloom 

and  cultivation  of  all  desirable,  hardy  plants  for  the  formal  or  wild  garden,  with 

additional    lists    of   aquatics,    vines,    etc.  .  .  .     New  York,    F.   A.  Stokes   Co. 

[1907]     516  pages,     illus.     (Also  later  reprints.) 
Whately,  Thomas. 

Of  Wood.     In  his  Observations  on  Modern  Gardening,  Sections  XII-XXV. 


372 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

STRUCTURES   IN   RELATION  TO  LANDSCAPE 

Caparn,  Harold  A. 

The  ^Esthetic  Value  of  Roads  and  Walks.     In  Garden  and  Forest,  July  ii,  1894, 

V.  7,  p.  272-273. 


Statuary  in   Informal  Settings.     In  Landscape  Architecture,  Oct.  1910,  v.  i,  p. 
22-30.     illus. 
Drives  and  Walks.     In  Garden  and  Forest,  1889,  v.  2,  a  series  of  four  articles  be- 
ginning Sept.  II  and  ending  Oct.  2. 
Esthetic  design. 

Fences.     In  Garden  and  Forest,  1893,  v.  6,  a  series  of  three  articles  beginning  Nov.  22 
and  ending  Dec.  13. 

"  Fences  "  is  used  in  the  sense  of  structural  boundaries,  including  walls. 

Hamerton,  Philip  Gilbert. 

Architecture  in  Landscape.     In  his  Landscape,  Ch.  XXXVII. 
Buildings  in  their  large  relations  to  their  landscape  settings. 

Hooper,  Charles  Edward. 

The  Country  House;  a  practical  manual  of  the  planning  and  construction  of  the 
American  country  home  and  its  surroundings.  New  York,  Doubleday,  Page  & 
Co.,  1905.     330  pages,     illus.  plans.     (Also  later  reprints.) 

Hopkins,  Alfred. 

Modern  Farm  Buildings ;  being  suggestions  for  the  most  approved  ways  of  de- 
signing .  .  .  buildings  of  the  farm  group,  on  practical,  sanitary  and  artistic  lines. 
New  York,  McBride,  Nast  &  Co.,  1913.  206  pages,  illus.  plans.  (Also  later 
edition.) 

Jekyll,  Gertrude,  and  Lawrence  Weaver. 

Gardens  for  Small  Country  Houses.     (See  under  Estates  and  Gardens.) 
Examples  of  structures  on  English  estates,  with  many  illustrations. 

Mawson,  Thomas  H. 

The  Art  and  Craft  of  Garden  Making.     (See  under  Estates  and  Gardens.) 

Contains  many  interesting  illustrations  of  structures  used  in  landscape  design. 

Sitwell,  Sir  George. 

An  Essay  on  the  Making  of  Gardens,  1909.     Passim,  but  especially  p.  80-86. 
Interesting  observations  on  the  architectural  use  of  water,  as  exemplified  in  the  gardens  of  Italy. 

Tyrrell,  Henry  Grattan. 

Artistic  Bridge  Design.  A  systematic  treatise  on  the  design  of  modern  bridges 
according  to  aesthetic  principles.  With  an  introduction  by  Thomas  Hastings. 
Chicago,  The  Myron  C.  Clark  Publishing  Co.     [1912]     294  pages,     illus. 


REFERENCES 


373 


Underwood,  Loring. 

The  Garden  and  its  Accessories.     Boston,  Little  Brown  &  Co.,  1907.     215  pages, 
illus.     (Also  later  edition.) 

On  garden  structures  and  garden  furniture. 

Van  Rensselaer,  M.  G.  (Mrs.  Schuyler). 

Color  in  Rural  Buildings.     In  Garden  and  Forest,  Mar.  30,  1892,  v.  5,  p.  146-147. 


TYPES  OF  LANDSCAPE   DESIGNS 

Andre,  Edouard. 

L'Art  des  Jardins.     1879. 

Division  et  Classification  des  Jardins.     Ch.  VII,  p.  184-200. 
Exemples  et  Descriptions  de  Pares  et  de  Jardins  classes  suivant  leur  destina- 
tions.    Ch.  XI,  p.  752-835. 

MiGGE,    LeBERECHT. 

Groszstadt    und    Garten.  —  A.    Private    Garten. — B.    Offentliche    Garten. — 
C.  Gartenahnliche   Bildungen.     In  his  Die  Gartenkultur  des  20.  J ahrhunderts , 
1913)  P-  6-57.     illus.  plans. 
A  brief  discussion  of  a  large  number  of  the  types  of  landscape  designs  according  to  use. 

Parsons,  Samuel. 

Landscape   Gardening   Studies.     New  York,   J.    Lane   Co.,    1910.     107   pages, 
illus.  plans. 
Typical  examples  of  problems  in  landscape  design  and  their  solutions. 

ESTATES  AND  GARDENS 

Blomfield,  Reginald,  and  F.  Inigo  Thomas. 

The  Formal  Garden  in  England.     London,  Macmillan  &  Co.,  1892.     249  pages. 

illus.     (Also  later  editions.) 

The  second  edition,  also  1892,  contains  a  preface  on  behalf  of  architectural  garden  design  in  con- 
troversy with  the  naturalistic  point  of  view  as  set  forth  by  William  Robinson. 

Godfrey,  Walter  H. 

Gardens  in  the  Making,  with  illustrative  designs  by  the  author  and  Edmund  L. 
Wratten.     [London]  B.  T.  Batsford.     [1914]     207  pages,     illus.  plans. 
On  garden  design.     The  pictures  are  pen  and  ink  sketches. 

Jekyll,  Gertrude,  and  Lawrence  Weaver. 

Gardens  for  Small  Country  Houses.     London,   "Country  Life";    New  York, 

C.  Scribner's  Sons,  1913.     260  pages,     illus.  plans.     (Also  later  reprints.) 

A  valuable  reference  book  of  English  examples  of  garden  design,  arranged  by  topic,  and  copiously 
illustrated. 


374 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

Kellaway,  Herbert  J. 

How   to  lay  out  Suburban   Home  Grounds.     Second   edition,  enlarged.     New 
York,  J.  Wiley  &.  Sons,  1915.     134  pages,     illus.  plans. 
A  sensible  book  to  put  into  the  hands  of  persons  interested  in  the  improvement  of  their  home  grounds. 

Kemp,  Edward. 

How  to  lay  out  a  Garden  :  intended  as  a  general  guide  in  choosing,  forming,  or 
improving  an  estate,  (from  a  quarter  of  an  acre  to  a  hundred  acres  in  extent) 
with  reference  to  both  design  and  execution  .  .  .  from  the  2d  London  ed.,  greatly 
enlarged.     New  York,  Wiley  &  Halsted,  1858.     403  pages,     illus.  plans. 

First  edition  appeared  1850,  and  there  are  several  later  editions  with  varying  titles,  including  a  4th 
in  191 1,  "adapted  to  North  America"  by  F.  A.  Waugh. 

Mawson,  Thomas  H. 

The  Art  &  Craft  of  Garden  Making.     4th  edition.     London,  B.  T.  Batsford ; 

New  York,  C.   Scribner's  Sons,   1912.     404  pages,     illus.  plans,     folio.     (Each 
edition  from  the  first,  1900,  enlarged,  with  additional  illustrations.) 
Primarily  a  picture  book,  of  great  value  for  reference  in  designing. 

MuTHEsius,  Hermann. 

Landhaus  und  Garten.  Beispiele  neuzeitliche  Landhauser  nebst  Grundrissen, 
Innenraumen  und  Garten.  Miinchen,  F.  Bruckmann  A.-G.,  1907.  240  pages, 
illus.  plans. 

Robinson,  William. 

Garden  Design  and  Architects'  Gardens.  Two  reviews  [of  Sedding,  and  Blom- 
field  and  Thomas].     London,  J.  Murray,  1892.     73  pages,     illus. 

See  notes  under  the  books  referred  to. 

Schultze-Naumburg,  Paul. 

Kulturarbeiten  ;  herausgegeben  vom  Kunstwart.  Miinchen,  G.  D.  W.  Callwey, 
1902-1907.     5  V.     illus.     (The  volumes  have  been  reprinted  at  various  times.) 

Note  especially :   Bd.  2.  Garten,  und  Erganzende  Bilder  zu  Bd.  2. 

Bedding,  John  D. 

Garden-craft  Old  and  New,  by  the  late  John  D.  Sedding,  with  a  memorial  notice 
by   the   Rev.    E.    F.    Russell.      London,    Kegan   Paul   etc.,    1891.      215    pages, 
illus.     (Also  several  later  editions.) 
This  book  groups  itself  with  Blomfield  and  Thomas  in  justifying  the  architectural  garden. 

United  States 

American  Country  Houses  of  Today. 

A  series  of  three  volumes,  1912,  1913,  1915,  published  in  New  York  by  the  Archi- 
tectural Book  Publishing  Company. 

Photographs  and  plans  of  recent  work  by  American  architects  and  landscape  architects. 


REFERENCES 


375 


Lowell,  Guy,  editor. 

American  Gardens.     Boston,  Bates  &  Guild,  1902.     112  plates. 

A  coUection  of  photographs  and  thumbnail  plans  of  formal  gardens,  many  of  them  well  known. 

Great  Britain 

Gardens  Old  and  New.     London,  "Country  Life";   Xew  York,  Charles  Scribner's 
Sons,  1902-1907.     3  V.     illus.     folio  ("Country  Life"  library). 
Photographs  and  descriptions. 
Holme,  Charles,  editor. 

[International  Studio  series  of  English  gardens.]     London,  "The  Studio,"  1907- 
191 1,  each  volume  containing  136  plates. 
The  Gardens  of  England  in  the  Southern  and  Western  Counties. 
The  Gardens  of  England  in  the  Midland  and  Eastern  Counties. 
The  Gardens  of  England  in  the  Northern  Counties. 

Jekyll,  Gertrltje,  and  George  S.  Elgood. 

Some  English  Gardens.  After  drawings  by  George  S.  Elgood,  with  notes  by 
Gertrude  Jekyll.  London,  Longmans,  Green  &  Co.,  1904.  131  pages,  colored 
plates,     folio. 

Macartney,  Mer\tx. 

English  Houses  and  Gardens  in  the  17th  and  iSth  centuries;  a  series  of  bird's- 
eye  views  reproduced  from  contemporary  engravings  by  Kip,  Badeslade,  Harris 
and  others,  with  descripuve  notes.  London,  B.  T.  Batsford ;  New  York,  C. 
Scribner's  Sons,  1908.     38  pages  and  Ixi  plates. 

Triggs,  H.  Ixigo. 

Formal  Gardens  in  England  and  Scotland,  their  planning  and  arrangement, 
architectural  and  ornamental  features.  Illustrated  by  drawings  by  the  author 
and  photographs  by  Charles  Latham.  London,  B.  T.  Batsford,  1902.  122 
plates,  including  plans,     folio. 

France 
Du  Cerceau,  Jacques  Androuet. 

French  Chateavx  and  Gardens  in  the  X\1th  century.  A  series  of  reproductions 
of  contemporary  drawings  hitherto  unpublished.  By  Jacqves  Androuet  Dv 
Cerceav.  Selected  and  described  with  an  account  of  the  artist  and  his  works 
by  W.  H.  Ward.  London,  B.  T.  Batsford,  1909.  36  pages,  illus.,  and 
xxvii  plates,  folio. 
See  further  Fouquier,  and  also  Stein  {under  History  and  Historic  Sri'LEs). 

Germany 
Die  Woche. 

Hausgarten.     Skizzen  und  Entwiirfe  aus  dem  Wettbewerb  der  Woche.     Berlin, 
A.  Scherl,  1908.     119  pages,     illus.  plans. 
Characteristic  designs  for  modem  German  small  estates. 
See  further  Gartenkunst  {under  Periodicals),  and  Muthesius  above. 


376 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

Italy 

Elgood,  George  S. 

Italian  Gardens,  after  drawings  by  George  S.  Elgood,  with  notes  by  the  artist. 
London,  Longmans,  Green  and  Co.,  1907.     156  pages,     colored  plates,     folio. 

Forbes,  A.  Holland. 

Architectural  Gardens  of  Italy.  A  series  of  photogravure  plates  from  photo- 
graphs made  and  selected  by  A.  Holland  Forbes.  New  York,  Forbes  &  Co.,  1902. 
196  plates,  including  plans,     folio. 

Latham,  Charles. 

The  Gardens  of  Italy,  [photographs]  by  Charles  Latham;  with  descriptions  by 
E.  March  Phillipps.     London,  "Country  Life,"  1905.     2  v.     illus.     folio. 

Triggs,  H.  Inigo. 

The  Art  of  Garden  Design  in  Italy,  illustrated  by  photographs  and  plans  and 
numerous  sketches  in  the  text  taken  from  the  original  surveys  and  plans  specially 
made  by  the  author  and  photographs  by  Mrs.  Aubrey  Le  Blond.  London, 
Longmans,  Green  and  Co.,  1906.  134  pages,  illus.,  and  128  plates,  including 
plans,     folio. 

VARIOUS  SEMI-PUBLIC  TYPES 

Evans,  Frederick  N. 

The  Planning  and  Planting  of  Golf-courses.  In  Landscape  Architecture,  July 
1917,  V.  7,  p.  172-180.     plans. 

Manning,  Warren  H. 

Landscape  Phase  of  the  University  of  California  plan.  In  American  Architect 
and  Building  News,  July  16,  1898,  v.  61,  p.  20-22. 

Data  on  the  areas  required  for  various  college  activities  with  reference  to  the  competition  for  the 

University  of  California  plan. 

Seavey,  Frances  Copley. 

Railroad-Gardening.     In    Bailey's    Standard   Cyclopedia    of  Horticulture,    v.    5, 
1916,  p.  2898-2903.     illus.  plans. 
On  planning  and  planting  the  areas  about  railroad  stations  and  rights-of-way. 


BuDDEN,  Lionel  B. 

The  Relation  of  Exposition  Planning  to  Civic  Design.     In  Town  Planning  Re- 
view, Jan.  1916,  V.  6,  p.  153-162.     illus.  plans. 

Includes  a  discussion  of  the  principles  of  design  applied  to  effective  grouping  of  Exposition  buildings. 


Olmsted,  Frederick  Law,  Jr. 

Notes  on  the  Antwerp  Quay  and  on  the  Exhibition  of  Animals  in  Zoological 
Parks.  1902.  7  pages,  illus.  plans.  (Park  Improvement  Papers,  2d  series, 
No.  2.  Printed  for  the  use  of  the  Senate  Committee  on  the  District  of  Columbia.) 
Included  also  in  later  compiled  volume. 


REFERENCES 377 

Britton,  N.  L. 

Botanical  Gardens ;  portion  of  address  before  American  Association  for  the 
Advancement  of  Science,  1896.  In  Garden  and  Forest,  Sept.  2  and  9,  1896,  v.  9, 
P-  352-353,  362-363. 

Purposes,  design,  brief  history  in  the  United  States. 

Cemeteries 
Caparn,  Harold  A. 

Modern  Meditations  among  the  Tombs.     In  Landscape  Architecture,  July  1911, 
V.  I,  p.  172-180.     illus.  plan. 
On  the  improvement  of  the  "park  cemeter)'"  by  better  design  and  more  planting. 

Hare,  Sid  J.,  and  S.  Herbert  Hare. 

Organizing  and  Developing  a  Modern  Cemetery.  In  Park  and  Cemetery,  1915, 
V.  24-25,  a  series  of  ten  articles  beginning  in  January  and  ending  in  October, 
illus.  plans. 

Treats  of  the  park  cemetery. 

Olmsted,  John  Charles. 

The  Two  Types  of  Cemeteries.     In  Garden  and  Forest,  May  23,  1888,  v.  i,  p.  147- 
148. 
Architectural  and  landscape. 

Weed,  Howard  Evarts. 

Modern  Park  Cemeteries.  Chicago,  R.  J.  Haight,  1912.  145  pages,  illus. 
plans. 

A  brief  practical  manual  of  design,  construction,  and  administration,  primarily  for  the  cemetery 
superintendent. 

PARKS  AND  PLAYGROUNDS 
Alphand,  a. 

Les  Promenades  de  Paris.  Histoire  —  descriptions  des  embellissements — de- 
penses  de  creation  et  d'entretien  des  Bois  de  Boulogne  et  de  Vincennes,  Champs- 
Elysees  —  pares  —  squares  —  boulevards  —  places  plantees.  Etude  sur  I'art  des 
jardins  et  arboretum.  Paris,  J.  Rothschild,  1867-1873.  246  pages  text  with 
illus.,  and  atlas,  including  plans,  folio. 
A  monumental  work. 

American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social  Science. 

Public    Recreation    Facilities.     Philadelphia,    1910.      266    pages,     illus.     (An- 
nals, v.  XXXV,  no.  2.) 
On  local  and  national  recreation  facilities. 

American  Association  of  Park  Superintendents. 

Proceedings,  from  1899,  and  Bulletins,  from  1906,  to  date. 
Cover  interesting  points  in  park  construction  and  administration. 


378 LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

American  Park  and  Outdoor  Art  Association. 
[Addresses  and  Proceedings.]     1 897-1904.     7  v. 
Contain  many  interesting  papers  on  public  parks  and  related  subjects. 

American  Society  of  Landscape  Architects. 

Our  National  Parks  :   a  conference.     Addresses  and  letters  presented  at  a  meet- 
ing of  the  Society,  1916.    In  Landscape  Architecture,  Apr.  1916,  v.  6,  p.  101-123. 
Brings  out  the  relation  between  the  profession  of  landscape  architecture  and  our  national  parks. 

Burnap,  George. 

"Passing-through"   Parks.     In   his  Parks,    Their  Design,  Equipment  and  Use, 
Philadelphia,  J.  B.  Lippincott  Co.,  1916,  Ch.  IV,  p.  78-96.     illus. 
On  small  intown  parks.     The  book  is  useful  also  on  the  subject  of  park  structures. 

Caparn,  Harold  A. 

Some  Reasons  for  a  General  System  of  State  Parks.     In  Landscape  Architecture, 
Jan.  1917,  V.  7,  p.  65-72. 
Eliot,  Charles  William. 

Charles  Eliot,  Landscape  Architect.     (See  under  General.) 
Chapters  XVII  -XIX,  XXI,  XXIII-XXVIII,  XXX-XXXII,  XXXIV-XXXIX  relate  especially 
to  public  open  spaces,  including  the  outlying  reservations  of  the  Boston  Metropolitan  District. 

Lay,  Charles  Downing. 

Playground  Design.     In  Landscape  Architecture,  Jan.  1912,  v.  2,  p.  63-75.     plans. 
Koch,  Hugo. 

Gartenkunst    im    Stadtebau.     Berlin,    E.    Wasmuth,    1914.     256    pages,     illus. 

plans. 
Treats  of  the  design  and  planting  of  park  areas. 

Mero,  Everett  B. 

American  Playgrounds :   their  construction,  equipment,  maintenance  and  utility. 

New  York,  Baker  &  Taylor  Co.  [1909]     293  pages,     illus.  plans. 
National  Park  Conference. 

Proceedings.     ist-3d,  1911,  1912,  and  1915.     Washington,  Government  Printing 

Office,  1912-1915.     3  V. 

Papers  and  discussions  on  the  development  and  administration  of  the  national  parks  and    monu- 
ments of  the  United  States. 

Olmsted,  Frederick  Law,  Sr. 

Notes  on  the  Plan  of  Franklin  Park  and  related  matters.     Boston,  Park  Depart- 
ment, 1886.     115  pages,     illus.  plans. 
Contains  perhaps  the  best  printed  statement  of  the  general  principles  underlying  the  design  of  large 
landscape  parks. 


Public  Parks  :  being  two  papers  read  before  the  American  Social  Science  Associa- 
tion in  1870  and  1880,  entitled  respectively,  Public  Parks  and  the  Enlargement 


J 


REFERENCES 379 

of  Towns,  and,  A  Consideration  of  the  Justifying  Value  of  a  Public  Park.     Brook- 
line  [Privately  printed],  1902.     114  pages. 
Refer  primarily  to  large  landscape  parks  and  the  need  for  them  in  cities. 

Olmsted,  Frederick  L.wv,  Jr. 

Playgrounds  in  Parks  from  the  Designer's  Standpoint ;  paper  before  American 
Association  of  Park  Superintendents.  In  Landscape  Architecture,  Apr.  1917, 
V.  7,  p.  122-127.     (Also  published  in  Park  and  Cemetery  and  elsewhere.) 


The  Relation  of  Reservoirs  to  Parks.  Boston,  Rockwell  and  Churchill  Press, 
1899.  32  pages,  illus.  plans.  (American  Park  and  Outdoor  Art  Association, 
Paper  32,  1899.) 

LAND  SUBDIVISION 

National  Conference  on  City  Planning. 

Best  Methods  of  Land  Subdivision.  In  Proceedings  of  7th  Conference,  191 5,  p.  42- 
106,  247-273. 

Includes  the  results  of  a  questionnaire  sent  out  to  representative  American  cities. 


City  Planning  Study.     In  Proceedings  of  5th  Conference,  1913,  p.  163-21 1,     plans. 
Also  published  as  special  supplement  to  Landscape  Architecture,  Apr.  1913. 

Nichols,  J.  C. 

Real  Estate  Subdivisions :    the  best  manner  of  handling  them.     Washington, 

1912  and  1916.     15  pages.     (American  Civic  Association  publication.) 
Robinson,  Charles  Mulford. 

City  Planning,  with  special  reference  to  the  Planning  of  Streets  and  Lots.     (See 

under  City  Planning.) 
Chapters  X-XIV  relate  especially  to  land  subdivision. 

Unwin,  Raymond. 

Town  Planning  in  Practice.     (See  under  City  Planning.) 
Especially  Chapters  VIII,  IX,  and  XI. 
Yeomans,  Alfred  B. 

City  Residential  Land  Development  —  studies  in  planning;    competitive  plans 

for  subdividing  a  typical  quarter  section  of  land  in  the  outskirts  of  Chicago. 

Chicago,  University  of  Chicago  Press,  1916.     138  pages,     illus.  plans. 

CITi'   PLANNING.     COUNTRY  PLANNING 
Kehr,  Cyrus. 

National  System  of  Highways  and  Landscape  Designing;  address  delivered 
before  the  American  Civic  Association,  1915.  Washington,  1916.  (64th  Con- 
gress, 1st  session.     Senate  Document,  no.  350.) 

On  "national  planning." 


380  LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 

Lewis,  Nelson  P. 

The  Planning  of  the  Modern  City.  New  York,  J.  Wiley  &  Sons,  1916.  423  pages. 
illus.  plans. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  the  municipal  engineer.     Contains  a  large  amount  of  verified  data  on 
city-planning  practice  in  the  United  States. 

Mawson,  Thomas  H. 

Civic  Art ;  studies  in  town  planning,  parks,  boulevards  and  open  spaces.  London, 
B.  T.  Batsford,  igii.     375  pages,     illus.  plans,     folio. 

Especially  interesting  for  its  drawings. 

National  Conference  on  City  Planning. 

Proceedings.  1st,  1909,  published  in  Senate  Document  no.  422,  6ist  Congress, 
2d  session.     2d-8th  published  by  the  Conference,  Boston,  1910-1916. 

Contains  extensive  discussions  of  city-planning  subjects  of  general  as  well  as  of  technical  interest. 

Nolen,  John,  editor. 

City  Planning;  a  series  of  papers  presenting  the  essential  elements  of  a  city  plan. 

New   York,    D.   Appleton    &    Co.,    1916.     447   pages,     illus.   plans    (National 

Municipal  League  series). 
Papers  by  seventeen  experts  constituting  a  good  introduction  to  the  subject.     For  an  excellent 
statement  of  what  city  planning  means,  see  the  introductory  chapter  by  F.  L.  Olmsted,  Jr. 

Pray,  James  Sturgis,  and  Theodora  Kimball. 

City  Planning;  a  comprehensive  analysis  of  the  subject  arranged  for  the  classi- 
fication of  books,  plans,  photographs,  notes,  and  other  collected  material.  Cam- 
bridge, Harvard  University  Press,  1913.      103  pages. 

Robinson,  Charles  Mulford. 

City  Planning,  with  special  reference  to  the  Planning  of  Streets  and  Lots.     New 
York,  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  1916.     344  pages,     illus.  plans. 
Of  special  interest  to  the  landscape  designer. 


The  Improvement  of  Towns  and  Cities  ;  or.  The  practical  basis  of  civic  aesthetics. 
4th  rev.  ed.     New  York,  G.  P.  Putnam's  Sons,  1913.      313  pages. 
Also  a  good  introductory  book. 

Stubben,  J. 

Der  Stadtebau.     2  Aufl.     Stuttgart,  A.  Kroner,  1907.     652  pages,     illus.  plans. 
(Handbuch  der  Architektur,  4.  Teil,  9.  Hlbd.) 

An  extensive  and  authoritative  treatise. 

Swaelmen,  Louis  van  der. 

Preliminaires  d'Art  Civique,  mis  en  relation  avec  le  "cas  clinique"  de  la  Belgique. 
Leyde,  A.  W.  Sijthoff,  1916.     298  pages,     illus.  plans. 

Emphasizes  the  broader  aspects  of  city,  regional,  and  national  planning. 


REFERENCES  381 

Unwin,  Raymond. 

Town  Planning  in  Practice;  an  introduction  to  the  art  of  designing  cities  and 
suburbs.  2d  ed.  London,  T.  F.  Unwin,  191 1  (reprinted  1913).  416  pages, 
illus.  plans. 

Especially  valuable  for  esthetic  design  aspects. 

Waugh,  Frank  A. 

Rural  Improvement.  The  principles  of  civic  art  applied  to  rural  conditions, 
including  village  improvement  and  the  betterment  of  the  open  country.  New 
York,  Orange  Judd  Co.,  1914.     265  pages,     illus.  plans. 

PROFESSIONAL   PRACTICE 
Eliot,  Charles. 

The  Function  of  the  Landscape  Architect.     In  Charles  Eliot,  Landscape  Architect, 
p.  261-274. 
Olmsted,  Frederick  Law,  Jr. 

Cooperation  between  Architect  and  Landscape  Architect ;  a  letter  read  before  a 
meeting  of  the  Architectural  League  of  New  York,  191 1.  In  Landscape  Archi- 
tecture, Jan.  1912,  V.  2,  p.  45-51. 

Editorial  by  H.  V.  Hubbard  relating  to  this  article  in  the  same  number  of  Landscape  Architecture, 
p.  86-88. 

Robinson,  Charles  Mulford. 

Getting  the  Business.     In  Landscape  Architecture,  Apr.   1917,  v.  7,  p.   144-153. 

Hints  from  a  practitioner  to  his  younger  fellows. 

Shurtleff,  Flavel. 

The  Landscape  Architect  in  City  Planning;  address  before  American  Society  of 
Landscape  Architects,  1915.  In  Landscape  Architecture,  Apr.  1915,  v.  5,  p.  143- 
147. 

CONSTRUCTION  AND  MAINTENANCE 

Lyle,  William  T. 

Parks  and  Park  Engineering.  New  York,  J.  Wiley  &  Sons,  1916.  130  pages, 
illus. 

Contains  sections  on  Sur\-eys,  Labor  and  contracts,  and  Construction. 

Olmsted,  Frederick  Law,  Jr. 

Cost  of  Landscape  Development.  In  Transactions  of  the  American  Society  of 
Landscape  Architects,  1899-1908,  p.  96-102. 

Note  :  There  has  been  very  little  written  in  English  on  modern  landscape  construction 
as  such.  The  student  must  turn  to  books  on  engineering  such  as  H.  P.  Gillette's 
Earthwork  and  its  Cost,  I.  0.  Baker's  Masonry  Construction,  C.  G.  Elliott's  En- 
gineering for  Land  Drainage,  W.  P.  Gerhard's  Sanitation,  Water-supply  and 
Sewage  Disposal  of  Country  Houses,  or  Harwood  Frost's  Art  of  Roadmaking. 


INDEX 

Abbreviations:    illus.,  for  illustration;    note,  for  information  given  in  footnote;    re}.,  for 
reference  in  List  of  References. 


Abel,  Lothar,  quoted,  nou,  29;  ref.,  366 

Access,  as  affecting  location  and  orientation 
of  house  in  the  estate,  253-57;  roads  and 
paths  in  the  estate,  269-72;  access  to  the 
large  landscape  park,  308-9 

Addison,  Joseph,  45 

Advertising,  in  professional  practice  of  land- 
scape architecture,  329-31 

Aerial  perspective,  see  Atmospheric  perspec- 
tive 

Aldobrandini,  Villa,  41 

Alhambra,  35 

Alices  (Alleys),  in  style  of  Le  Notre,  43 ; 
pleached,  48;  forming  vistas,  125;  type  of 
trees  suitable  for  formal  rows,  154;  texture 
of  trees  in  avenue,  157;  specimens  m  rows, 
173  ;  allee  converging  attention  on  struc- 
ture, 187;  pavilions  on  axis  of,  197; 
statuary  along,  210 

Alleys,  in  land  subdivision,  282-83 

Alphand,  A.,  ref.,  377 

Alps,  climbing  in,  sequence  of  effects  of  land- 
scape, 84-85 

Amenity,  an  asset  m  land  subdivision,  277 

American  Academy  of  Political  and  Social 
Science,  ref.,  377 

American  Association  of  Park  Superintend- 
ents, ref.,  377 

American  colonial  gardens.  New  England 
colonial  style,  50-51 ;    ref.,  366 

American  Country  Houses  of  To-day,  ref.,  374 

American  Institute  of  Architects,  general  pro- 
fessional statement  approved  by,  331 

American  Joint  Committee  on  Horticultural 
Nomenclature,  note,  357 

American  landscape  style,  modern,  57-59 

American  Park  and  Outdoor  Art  Association, 
ref.,  378 

American  Society  of  Landscape  Architects, 
founded    1899,  325;    definition  of  a   land- 


scape architect  in  good  standing,  326; 
attitude  towards  professional  advertising, 
330;  general  professional  statement  ap- 
proved by,  331  ;   refs.,  362,  378 

Amherst,  Hon.  Alicia,  note,  49;    ref.,  364 

Amphitheaters,  natural,  in  the  large  land- 
scape park,  305 

Amusement  parks,  232;  relation  to  landscape 
parks,  307-8 

Analysis  in  design,  esthetic,  16 

Andre,  Edouard,  notes,  175,  225;  refs.,  363, 
366,  368,  369,  373 

Animals,  as  element  in  landscape  composition, 
129;   sheep  in  parks,  301,  315 

Announcements,  professional,  of  the  land- 
scape architect,  331 

Annuals,  in  flower  beds,  178-79 

Appreciation,  taste  and,  22 

Appreciation  of  landscape,  12;  quotation 
from  Shaler,  12-13;   '''/■f-i  366-67 

"  Appropriation,"  Repton's  phrase,  notes,  58, 
267 

Arbors,  51,  54,  246,  262 

Archer)',  pro\'ision  for,  in  the  large  landscape 
park,  305-6 

Architect,  comparison  with  landscape  archi- 
tect, 151,  325-27,  342;  cooperation  with 
landscape  architect,  193-94,  333~34;  in  city 
planning,  334 

Architectural  design,  scale  in,  102 

Architectural  structures,  see  Structures,  Archi- 
tectural 

Architectural  style,  see  Style,  Architectural 

"  Architectural  "  styles  of  landscape  design, 

34 
Architecture,  3,  232 

Arnold  Arboretum,  Boston,  illus.,  plate  15 
Art,  works  of,  basis  of  permanent  appeal,  15 
Asphalt,  as  material  of  roads  and  paths,  219, 

228 


383 


384 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Association,  incongruity  of,  unpleasant,  10; 
experience,  emotion,  and,  12-16;  in  Jap- 
anese garden  design,  56;  unity  from,  in 
style,  61 ;  melancholy  effect  of  landscape, 
due  to,  82 ;  as  modifying  shape  compo- 
sition, loi ;  illusions  of,  in  composition, 
121-22;  in  plant  character,  165-66;  plant 
symbolism,  166-67;  congruity  of,  in  shapes 
in  carpet  bedding,  182;  as  giving  distinc- 
tiveness to  garden,  238 

Atmosphere,  1 13-16;  haziness  giving  effect 
of  mystery,  82  ;  as  a  consideration  in  land- 
scape composition,  1 15-16 

Atmospheric  perspective,  113-16;  as  a  con- 
sideration in  landscape  composition,  115- 
16;   foliage  color  and,  161 

Attention,  mode  of  attraction,  basis  of  dis- 
tinction between  "  beautiful  "  and  "  pic- 
turesque "  effects,  77-79;  a  consideration 
in  landscape  composition,  90-91 ;  mode  of 
attraction  by  hill  and  mountain  forms, 
131-32,  by  tree  forms,  154 

Automobile  traffic,  relation  to  the  large  land- 
scape park,  310 

Autumn  foliage,  161-62 

Axial  arrangement,  broken  axis,  118,  at 
Isola  Bella,  120;  of  buildings  in  groups, 
194;  of  minor  buildings  in  scheme,  197; 
of  steps  in  scheme,  203  ;  paths  on  axis  of 
design,  227;  of  house  and  garden,  260. 
See  also  Formal  gardens 

Backgrounds,  in  composition,  126-28;  for 
grille-work,  209;   of  statuary,  212-13 

Bailey,  Liberty  Hyde,  ref.,  369-70 

Baker,  I.  O.,  ref.,  381 

Balance,  of  interest,  example  in  pictorial  com- 
position, 90;  balance  in  composition,  96- 
97,  symmetrical,  97,  occult,  97;  intensifi- 
cation of  emotion  from,  97-98 ;  of  shapes 
in  composition,  100;  of  textures  in  com- 
position, 104;  in  color  composition,  108, 
110;  in  mountain  forms,  133;  sought  in 
garden  design,  236-37 

Baltit,  Hunza,  illus.,  plate  36 

Balustrades,  48,  199,  200,  201,  202,  216; 
illusions  of  material,  117,  119 

Bandstands,  in  the  large  landscape  park,  315 

Banks,  of  streams,  140-42;  earth  and  bowlder, 
144;  bowlder,  146;  earth,  design,  148-50; 


terrace,  198,  199,  200-1  ;  steps  in  turf 
banks,  202;  banks  as  part  of  garden 
boundary,  235,  240-41 

Bark  of  trees  and  shrubs,  color,  162 

Baroque  villas  in  Italy,  style  of,  39-42 

Barren  or  tundra,  a  landscape  character,  65- 
66 

Baseball,  provision  for,  in  the  large  landscape 
park,  307 

Basins,  see  Pools 

Bathing  facilities  as  part  of  recreation  system, 
297 

Beaches,  and  sand  dunes,  66;  as  elements  in 
design,  138-40;  of  brooks  and  ponds  in 
landscape  parks,  303-4;   sea,  ref.,  369 

"  Beautiful,"  literary  discussions  of  the  term 
as  opposed  to  "  picturesque,"  77-78 ;  ap- 
plication in  design,  78-79;  Price's  Essay 
on  the,  ref.,  367 

Beauty,  definition,  19-21;  and  ugliness,  20; 
and  pleasure,  20;  no  universal  standards 
of,  20-21 ;  in  landscape  character,  63  ;  an 
asset  in  land  subdivision,  277-78 

Bedding  plants,  see  Carpet  bedding 

Beds,  see  Carpet  bedding.  Flower  beds.  Her- 
baceous beds.  Shrub  beds 

Belgium,  replanning,  ref.,  380 

Bibliography  of  landscape  architecture,  refs., 
361-62 

"  Big  Trees,"  66 

Bird-baths,  245 

Birds,  attraction  by  berry-bearing  trees  and 
shrubs,  162 

Blanchard  and  Drowne,  note,  220 

Blocks  in  land  subdivision,  see  Land  subdivi- 
sion, subtopics :    Streets,  Lots 

Blomfield,  Reginald,  ref.,  373 

Boathouses,  in  the  large  landscape  park,  315 

Boating,  provision  for,  in  the  large  landscape 
park,  305 

Boccaccio,  40 

Border  lines,  on  landscape  plans,  350 

Borders,  herbaceous,  176-77 

Bosquets,  42,  43;  design,  167;  pools  in, 
216 

Boston,  Arnold  Arboretum,  illus.,  plate  15; 
Franklin  Park,  ref.,  378,  illus.,  opp.  298, 
plates  31,  32,  33,  34,  35 

Boston  Public  Library,  ref.,  361 

Botanical  gardens,  232;  ref.,  :}J7 


INDEX 


385 


Boulevards,  relation  to  the  large  landscape 
park,  310 

Boundaries,  see  Inclosure 

Boundary  plantations,  j-i'ir  Inclosing  plantations 

Bowlders,  in  streams,  140-41  ;  in  naturalistic 
design,  144-45 

Bowling-greens,  48,  266,  305 

Bradfield,  Devon,  illus.,  opp.  158 

Brick,  color  of  buildings  in  relation  to  land- 
scape, 195;  walls,  206;  as  material  of 
roads  and  paths,  219,  229 

Bridges,  Japanese,  56;  planting  as  enframe- 
ment  of  bridge  and  views  from,  187; 
bridges  as  elements  in  landscape  design,  216- 
18;  forms  and  materials,  217-18;  for  roads 
crossing  at  separated  grades,  222;  over 
brooks  and  ponds  in  landscape  parks,  303- 
4;   Tef.,  372 

Bridle  paths,  materials,  227 ;  in  the  large 
landscape  park,  311,  interrelation  with 
roads  and  footpaths,  313-14 

Britton,  N.  L.,  ref.,  TiJJ 

Broken  stone,  as  material  of  roads  and  paths, 
219,  228 

Brookline,  Mass.,  "  Weld,"  illus.,  plate  30 

Brooks,  symbolic  representation  in  Japanese 
gardens,  55  ;  as  elements  in  design,  140-42 ; 
in  large  landscape  parks,  303-4 

BrowTi,  "  Capability,"  note,  47 ;  monotony  of 
his  designs,  49;  his  "clumps,"  Price  quo- 
tation, note,  173-74 

"  Browsing  line,"  69 

Budden,  Lionel  B.,  ref.,  376 

Building  groups,  194;   farm,  264 

Buildings,  planting  as  enframement,  186; 
planting  as  transition  from  ground  to,  187- 
88;  buildings  in  relation  to  landscape,  189- 
96;  subordinate  to  natural  character,  189- 
90;  dominating  landscape,  190-92;  form 
relations  to  landscape  surroundings,  192- 
94,  texture  relations,  194-95,  color  relations, 
195-96;  terraces  as  base  for,  198-99;  sub- 
ordination of  farm  group  to  landscape 
surroundings,  264;  buildings  properly  serv- 
ing park  uses,  314-16;  in  relation  to  the 
park  landscape,  316 

Bumap,  George,  ref.,  378 

Bushy  pasture,  a  landscape  character,  68-69 ; 
walls  in,  207 

Butler,  W.  F.,  quoted,  note,  64 


Cameron,  Robert,  ref.,  371 

Canals,  in  Moghul  gardens,  38;  long  canal 
at  Versailles,  44 

Caparn,  Harold  A.,  notes,  212,322;  refs.,  368, 
370,  372.  376,  378 

Carpet  bedding,  as  surface  decoration,  128; 
in  planting  design,  180-82;  in  garden 
design,  243  ;   ref.,  370 

"  Cartouches,"  on  landscape  plans,  351 

Cascades,  37,  41,  214 

Castello,  \'illa,  40 

Cement,  color  of  buildings  in  relation  to 
landscape,  195  ;  as  material  of  roads  and 
paths,  219,  228 

Cement  concrete,  n8,  119;  walls,  205-6; 
roads,  228-29 

Cement  stucco,  see  Stucco 

Cemeteries,  53,  232;    refs.,  377 

Central  Park,  New  York,  58 ;    note,  308 

Chambers,  Sir  Williams,  ref.,  364 

Chantillv,  42,  44 

Character(s),  Landscape,  see  Landscape  char- 
acter(s) 

Character,  Plant,  see  Plants 

Charges,  professional,  of  the  landscape  archi- 
tect, 326-28 

Churches,  area  reserved  for,  in  land  sub- 
division, 289-90 

Circulation,  provision  of  roads  and  paths  in 
the  estate,  269-72;  in  the  large  landscape 
park,  309-14 

City  planning,  influence  of  style  of  Le  Notre, 
44-45 ;  types  of  landscape  designs  and, 
232;  choice  of  type  of  land  development 
in  relation  to  development  of  city,  280-82 ; 
relation  of  street  system  in  land  subdivision 
to  city  plan,  282 ;  relation  of  outdoor  recrea- 
tion areas  to  city  plan,  297-98 ;  reserva- 
tion of  land  for  public  uses,  318-21  ;  work 
in,  as  increasing  professional  reputation  of 
landscape  architect,  329;  exhibitions  of 
landscape  architects'  work,  331;  coopera- 
tion of  landscape  architect  with  other  practi- 
tioners in,  334;  refs.,  379-81;  landscape 
architect  in,  ref.,  381 

Civic  centers,  scale  relation  of  buildings,  194; 
space  reserved  for,  in  land  subdivision,  290 

Classic  stjdes,  a  category,  33 

Classification  of  landscape  architecture,  337 

Claude  Lorrain,  45,  93 


386 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Cleveland,  H.  W.  S.,  57 

Clients,  point  of  view  as  stimulus  to  designer, 
15-16;  tastes  consulted  by  Japanese  de- 
signers, 56;  desires  expressed  by  landscape 
designer  in  terms  of  effects,  86-87 ;  desires 
interpreted  by  designer  of  estate,  249; 
desires  in  relation  to  choice  of  site  for  estate, 
273 ;  charges  of  landscape  architect  to, 
326-28;  relations  with  landscape  architect 
and  contractor,  332-33  ;  desires  considered 
in  landscape  design,  338-39 

Climate,  eff'ect  on  historic  styles  of  landscape 
design,  29 

Climax,  in  composition,  91-92 

Climbing  in  Alps,  sequence  of  effects  of 
landscape,  84-85 

Clouds,  as  aff^ecting  landscape  character  of 
prairie,  64;  as  element  in  landscape  com- 
position, 129 

Coasting,  provision  for,  in  the  large  landscape 
park,  305-6 

Codman,  Henry  Sargent,  ref.,  361 

Codman  Collection  of  books  on  landscape 
gardening,  ref.,  361 

Cold  frames,  265,  266 

College  buildings,  194 

College  grounds,  232  ;    paths  in,  226;   ref.,  376 

Collodi  (Garzoni),  Villa,  41 ;   illus.,  opp.  40 

Colonial  gardens,  American,  ref.,  366 

Colonial,  New  England,  style  of  landscape 
design,  50-51 

Color,  as  modifying  shape  composition,  loi  ; 
in  composition,  104-11;  and  light,  105-6; 
hue,  intensity,  and  value  m  color  composi- 
tion, 106-7;  emotional  eff^ect  of  colors,  107; 
color  harmony,  107-10;  in  landscape  com- 
position, iio-ii;  illusions  of,  difficult,  117; 
diff"erentiation  of  planes  of  distance,  127; 
reflected  in  water,  137;  of  rocks,  146; 
in  ground  surface,  148;  of  plant  materials, 
151,  159-64;  of  foliage,  159-62;  of  trees 
and  shrubs  in  winter,  162  ;  of  flowers,  162-64; 
nomenclature,  163  ;  in  inclosing  plantations, 
168-69;  as  giving  individuality  to  plants, 
172;  in  tree  and  shrub  groups,  175;  ar- 
rangement of  herbaceous  plants  in  beds, 
179;  in  carpet  bedding,  181-82;  of  turf  as 
background,  182;  of  buildings  in  harmony 
with  landscape,  190;  of  buildings  dominat- 
ing   landscape,     191;     color    harmony    of 


buildings  in  groups,  194;  relations  of  build- 
ings and  landscape  surroundings,  195-96, 
'■</^->  373;  of  steps  in  landscape,  204;  of 
statuary  in  relation  to  landscape,  212; 
of  reflections  in  pools,  216;  in  materials  of 
roads  and  paths,  227-30;  color  of  flower 
as  giving  distinctiveness  to  garden,  238; 
color  in  representation  on  landscape  plans, 

348.  349 
Comfort    stations,    in    the    large    landscape 

park,  315 
"  Commercial    recreations,"    relation    to    the 

landscape  park,  307-8 
"  Commons,"  as  part  of  recreation    system, 

297        .  . 

Competitions,  in  professional  practice  of  land- 
scape architecture,  332 

Composition,  in  landscape  and  in  painting, 
88-89;  order  in,  objective  and  subjective, 
89-90;  forms  of  order  in,  93-97.  See  also 
Landscape  composition 

Compositions,  pictorial,  segregation  of,  90; 
typical  kinds,  123-24;  example:  the  vista, 
124-25 

Compost  yards,  265,  266 

Concrete,  as  material  of  roads  and  paths, 
228-29.     See  also  Cement  concrete 

Conder,  Josiah,  ref.,  365 

Conduct,  professional,  of  the  landscape  archi- 
tect, 325-26 

Construction,  use  of  word,  6 ;  relation  to 
choice  of  style,  60;  of  roads,  note,  220; 
relation  to  design  of  estate,  273-74;  super- 
intendence of,   351-53  ;    refs.,  381 

Contractors,  relations  with  landscape  architect 
and  client,  332-33;  functions  in  landscape 
construction,  351-52 

Contracts  and  specifications,  344 

Contrast,  in  landscape  eflPects,  83-84;  in 
composition,  91-92 ;    of  foliage  color,   160 

Cooperation  of  landscape  architect  with 
other  practitioners,  333-34 ;  in  city  planning, 

334 
Cope,  Walter,  ref.,  366 
Corner  lots,  in  land  subdivision,  288 
Cottage,   English,  style  of  landscape  design, 

49-50 
Cottages,  German,  52' 
Country   clubs,   232;     land   set   aside   for,   in 

subdivision  scheme,  290-91 


I 


INDEX 


387 


Country  hotel  grounds,  231 
Country  houses,  see  Houses 
Country  parks,  see  Parks,  Landscape 
Country  planning,  refs.,  379-81 
Courtyard  gardens,  Moorish  in  Spain,  35 
Cricket,  provision  for,  in  the  large  landscape 

park,  307 
Criticism,  in  design,  26-27 ;   self-criticism,  27 
Croce,  Benedetto,   note,  19 
Croquet  laxvns,  266 
Cross-sections,  345 
Crowds,  as  element  in  landscape  composition, 

129 
Curbs,  road,  228 
Curtis,  Charles  H.,  ref.,  370 
Curtis,  G.  C  ,  note,  342 
Curves,  decorative,  use  or  avoidance  for  park 

roads  and  paths,  313 

Daigo,  garden  of  Sambo-in,  illus.,  plate  4 

Data,  topographic,  for  landscape  design,  339- 
40 

Dawber  and  Davie,  note,  50 

Dav,  Frank  Miles,  note,  314 

Degrees,  professional,  in  landscape  architec- 
ture, 325 

Design,  use  of  word,  6;  esthetic  theory, 
psychological  basis  of,  7-16;  esthetic 
analysis  in,  16;  sincerity- in,  17;  originality 
in,  28.  See  also  Formal  design.  Informal 
design,  Landscape  design.  Naturalistic 
design,  Planting  design 

Designer,  pleasure  of  artistic  creation,  11; 
breadth  of  experience,  15-16;  imagination 
and  genius,  28;  as  interpreting  the  client's 
desires  in  design  of  estate,  249,  in  design 
of  house,  253 

Desolation,  an  effect  sought  in  Romantic 
landscape  style,  46;  frequent  effect  of 
barren  or  tundra,  65 ;  a  landscape  effect, 
81 

Detail  plans,  345 

Distance,  in  composition,  101-3 ;  and  tex- 
tures in  composition,  104;  planes  of,  iij, 
in  composition,  126-28 

Districting,  in  relation  to  choice  of  type  of 
land  development,  281 ;  and  land  sub- 
division, 293-94 

Ditchfield,  P.  H.,  note,  50 

Dominance,  in  composition,  91-92 


Downing,   Andrew  Jackson,   note,   57;     refs., 

363.  370 
Drainage  considerations   in  land  subdivision. 

Drawings,  series  for  a  landscape  job,  345-46; 

representation  suited  to  person  addressed, 

346;    typical  drawings  for  a  landscape  job, 

355-56  and  illus.  following 
Drinking   fountains,    in    the    large   landscape 

park,  316 
Driving,  provision  for,  in  the  large  landscape 

park,  306 
Du  Cerceau,  Jacques  Androuet,  ref.,  375 
Dunes,  sand,  a  landscape  character,  66 
Dutch  garden  style,  influence  in  England,  49, 

in  Germany,  52;    refs.,  365,  366 

Edgings,  texture,  104,  157-58;  in  planting 
design,  171 ;  of  flower  beds,  177;  in  garden 
design,  237,  244 

Effect(s),  Landscape,  see  Landscape  effect(s) 

Elements  in  landscape  composition  :  tempo- 
rary elements,  129;  natural  forms  of  ground, 
rock,  and  water,  130-50;  vegetation,  151- 
88;    structures,  189-230 

Elgood,  George  S.,  refs.,  375,  376 

Eliot,  Charles,  57;  notes,  18,  68;  refs.,  362, 
363,  366,  370,  378,  381 

Eliot,  Charles  William,  refs.,  363,  366,  378 

Elizabethan  pleasure  garden,  49 

Emotion,  experience,  association,  and,  12-16; 
in  landscape  effect,  22 ;  expressed  in  Ro- 
mantic landscape  style,  46;  and  landscape 
effects,  76-82 ;  intensification  from  repeti- 
tion, sequence,  and  balance,  97-98;  sug- 
gested by  different  shapes,  100 

Emotional  effects,  in  Romantic  landscape 
style,  46-47,  note,  77;  in  Japanese  styles, 
55-56;  of  colors,  107;  from  water  in 
landscape,  137;  produced  by  expression 
of  trees,  166.     See  also  Landscape  effects 

Emphasis,  in  composition,  91-92 

Enframement,  pictorial,  in  landscape  com- 
position, 90,  1 24,  126-28;  of  plains,  136;  of 
views  into  inclosing  plantations,  168;  of 
structures  by  planting,  186-87;  of  steps, 
203  ;  of  statuary,  212-13.  S"  "1^°  En- 
closure 

Engineer,  comparison  with  landscape  archi- 
tect,   325-26,     327;     cooperation     in     city 


388 


LANDSCAPE     DESIGN 


planning,  334;   preparing  topographic  map 
for  landscape  architect,  339 

Engineering,  3,  232 

England,  Romantic  landscape  style  in,  45- 
47;  Tudor  formal  style  of  landscape  design 
in,  47-49;  cottage  style  of  landscape  de- 
sign, 49-50,  its  influence  in  America,  50- 
51 ;  influence  of  English  landscape  style  in 
America,  57-58 ;  pastoral  landscape,  61,  69- 
70;   gardens,  refs.,  364,  365,  371,  373,  375 

Entrance  drives,  formal,  226;  and  forecourts, 
258;    in  design  of  estate,  269-71 

Entrance  gates,  to  estates,  209;  and  fore- 
courts, 258;  and  lodges,  263-64;  to  the 
large  landscape  park,  308-9 

Ermenonville,  note,  47;    illus.,  plates  2,  3 

Espalier  trees,  206 

Estates,  in  modern  German  formal  style, 
53""S4;  in  modern  American  landscape 
style,  58-59;  development  of  landscape 
character  units  in,  71  ;  turf  in,  183  ;  build- 
ings of,  dominating  landscape,  191 ;  pavil- 
ions in,  197;  roads  in,  crossings,  222; 
as  type  of  landscape  design,  232; 

design  of  the  estate,  247-74;  as  express- 
ing the  owner's  desires,  247-49;  physical 
elements,  249-72  :  the  house,  250-57;  loca- 
tion and  orientation  of  house,  253-57;  the 
house  terrace,  257-58;  the  forecourt,  258- 
59;  the  garden  as  a  unit  of  the  estate,  259- 
61 ;  avoidance  of  traffic  through  garden, 
259-60;  pleasure  buildings,  261-62;  house 
service  areas,  263  ;  estate  service  buildings 
and  areas,  263-66;  the  greenhouse,  264-65  ; 
reserve  and  vegetable  gardens,  265-66; 
tennis  courts  and  areas  for  other  recreations, 
266-67 ;  the  open  lawn,  267-68 ;  tree-shaded 
areas,  268 ;  natural  character  units,  268-69 ; 
access,  269-72 ;  approach  roads,  269-71 ; 
paths,  271-72; 

design  of  the  whole  estate,  272-73 ; 
choice  of  site  for,  273-74;  apportionment 
of  estate  area  into  units  required,  274; 
typical  drawings  for  development,  355~56 
and  illus.  following ;  list  of  plants  to  accom- 
pany planting  plan  for,  357;  refs.,  373-76- 
Ste  also  Lots  in  land  subdivision 

Este,  Villa  d',  40,  203,  213,  214 

Esthetic  theory  of  design,  psychological  basis, 
7-16 


Evans,  Frederick  N.,  ref.,  376 

Evergreens,  specimens  as  building  decoration, 

188;   for  winter  effect  in  garden,  260-61 
Exhibitions,  public,  of  landscape  architecture, 

331 
Experience,  emotion,  and  association,  12-16 
Exposition  grounds,  232;    ref.,  376 
Expression,  esthetic,  19;   style  and,  22 
Extent,  effect  of  style  of  Le  Notre,  42-44; 

effect  of  prairie,  64-65;   and  sublimity,  79; 

effects  of  perspective,  102  ;   effect  sought  in 

the  estate,  267,  in  the  large  landscape  park, 

300-1 

FaJconieri,  Villa,  illus.,  opp.  112 

Falke,  Jakob,  quoted,  note,  29 

Farm  buildings,  264;  of  Hameau  at  Ver- 
sailles, 86 

Farnese,  Villa,  40,  215 

Fences,  51,  128;  as  elements  in  landscape  de- 
sign, 204-5  >  materials  and  decoration,  207- 
9;  gates  in,  209-10;  in  garden  design,  240, 
241,  242;  as  screen  of  service  yard,  263; 
restrictions  concerning,  in  land  subdivision, 
292-93  ;   as  park  boundary,  318;    ref.,  372 

Ferme  ornee,  46 

Fernow,  Bernhard  E.,  ref.,  370 

Field    force,   of  landscape    architect's   office, 

335-36 

Field  houses,  in  the  large  landscape  park,  315 

Fish  ponds,  48 

Flower  beds,  38,  51;  texture  considerations, 
158;  edgings,  171;  as  parts  of  a  garden 
inclosed,  177-79;  arrangement  of  plants  in 
relation  to  form  of  bed  and  form  of  plants, 
177-78;  in  relation  to  time  of  bloom,  178- 
79;  in  relation  to  color,  179;  grouping  of 
plants  according  to  color,  179;  carpet  bed- 
ding, 181;  relation  of  paths  to,  227;  turf 
paths  among,  230;  in  garden  design,  237, 
243-44 

Flower  gardens,  design  relation  to  the  vege- 
table garden,  265 ;  ref.,  370.  See  also 
Flower  beds,  Gardens 

Flower  pots,  202 

Flowers,  in  historic  styles  of  landscape  design, 
35,  36,  48,  50,  51;  color,  162-64,  practical 
difficulties  of  design  in,  162-63;  circum- 
stances harmonizing  flower  colors,  163 ; 
mass  relation  in  flower  color,  163-64;  sym- 


INDEX 


389 


holism,  167;  along  roads,  223;  in  gardens, 
236;  color  as  giving  distinctiveness  to 
garden,  238;  cultivated  flowers  in  the  large 
landscape  park,  305-6 

Foliage,  effect  on  texture  of  tree,  157;  color, 
effect  of  character  of  leaves  on,  159;  range 
of  color,  159;  restricted  use  of  other  colors 
than  green,  159-60;  effects  of  foliage  color, 
160;  contrast  of  color  in  differentiation  of 
units  in  design,  160;  color  and  aerial  per- 
spective, 161 ;  use  of  "  colored  foliage,"  161 ; 
autumn  foliage,  161-62;  as  background  for 
flower  colors,  163 

Fontainebleau,  44,  192 

Football,  provision  for,  in  the  large  landscape 
park,  307 

Footpaths,  see  Paths 

Forbes,  A.  Holland,  ref.,  376 

Forecourts,  in  design  of  the  estate,  249;  as 
affecting  house  location  in  the  estate,  255; 
relation  to  house  on  hillside,  256;  design, 
258-59;  relation  to  approach  road,  270, 
to  service  court,  271 

Foregrounds,  in  composition,  126-28;  of 
mountain  view,  133 

Forestry,  esthetic,  refs.,  370,  371 

Forests,  municipal,  320-21;  treatment  with 
regard  to  landscape  character,  72-73 

Forests,  national,  relation  to  national  parks,  3  22 

Form,  in  differentiation  of  planes  of  distance, 
127;  plant,  153-57;  form  relations  of  build- 
ings and  landscape  surroundings,  192-94, 
195;  of  steps  in  landscape,  201-4;  of 
statuary  in  relation  to  landscape,  212;  of 
bridges,  217-18.     See  also  Shape 

Formal  design,  maintenance,  61  ;  composition 
dependent  on  symmetrical  balance,  97; 
illusions  of  shape  in,  120;  objects  in,  accord- 
ing to  their  design  value,  128-29;  "colored  " 
foliage  in,  160;  hedges  in,  170-71 ;  specimen 
trees  and  shrubs  in,  173;  shrubs  in,  176; 
of  building  groups,  194;  steps  in,  201-3; 
walls  and  fences  in,  204;  gates  in,  209-10; 
statuary  in,  211;  water  in,  213-16;  tree 
planting  along  roads  in,  223 ;  roads  in, 
225-26;    paths  in,  226-27 

Formal  gardens,  129,  182,  199,  237;  planting 
of  beds  in,  178-79;  composition,  240-46; 
in  the  estate,  259-61.  See  also  Formal 
styles.  Gardens 


Formal  styles,  a  category,  33-34;  of  land- 
scape design,  examples:  Moorish  in  Spain, 
35-36;  Moghul  in  India,  36-39;  Italian 
Renaissance  and  Baroque,  39-42  ;  Le  Notre, 
42-45;  English  Tudor,  47-49;  New  Eng- 
land colonial,  50-51 ;    modern  German,  51- 

54 

Formalism,  reaction  against,  in  landscape 
style,  45 

Fountain  basins,  36,  44,  195 

Fountains,  in  historic  styles  of  landscape  de- 
sign, 36,  40,  41,  43  ;  as  objects  in  com- 
position, 123,  125;  texture  of  material, 
195;  enframed  by  steps,  203;  free-stand- 
ing, as  elements  in  landscape  design,  215; 
in  pools,  216;   in  garden  design,  244-46 

Fountains,  Wall,  213-14;  in  garden  design, 
241,  246 

Fouquier,  Marcel,  ref.,  365 

France,  Le  Notre's  style  of  landscape  design 
in,  42-45,  its  influence  in  England,  49; 
Romantic  landscape  style  in,  46;  estates 
and  gardens,  refs.,  365,  375 

Franklin  Park,  Boston,  see  Boston 

"  Free  landscape,"  68,  75 

Frost,  Harwood,  note,  220;    ref.,  381 

Fruit,  of  trees  and  shrubs,  in  planting  design, 
162 

Fruit  trees,  in  historic  styles  of  landscape  de- 
sign, 36,  51 

Gamberaia,  Villa,  note,  117;   ilhis.,  opp.  26 

Garages,  in  the  estate,  263,  271;  restrictions 
in  land  subdivision,  292-93 

Garden  and  Forest,  ref.,  362 

Garden  furniture,  54;   ref.,  373 

Garden  theaters,  266-67 

Gardener's  yards,  265,  266 

Gardens,  kinds  of  esthetic  pleasure  from, 
example,  8;  origin  of  historic  styles,  30; 
Moorish  in  Spain,  35;  Moghul  in  India, 
36-39;  Italian  Renaissance  and  Baroque, 
39-42;  French,  in  style  of  Le  Notre,  42- 
44;  English  Tudor  and  Elizabethan,  47- 
49;  English  cottage,  50;  New  England 
colonial,  51;  German,  54;  Japanese,  55- 
57;  styles  of  gardens  compared  to  char- 
acters of  valleys,  63  ;  illusions  of  shape, 
120;  illusions  of  size,  120;  views  in,  122; 
as  pictorial  compositions,  123  ;   flower  color 


39° 


LANDSCAPE     DESIGN 


in,  163;  flower  beds  in,  177-79;  according 
to  plant  character,  179;  significance  of 
statuary  in,  2 11- 12;  as  type  of  landscape 
design,  232 ; 

design,  233-46:  definition  and  use  of 
word,  233-34;  esthetic  characteristics, 
234-37;  inclosure,  234-35;  plants  in,  235- 
36;  unity  of  effect,  236;  recognizably  a 
work  of  design,  236-37;  formal  and  non- 
formal  arrangements,  237;  ways  of  giving 
a  garden  distinctiveness  :  topography,  form, 
season  of  greatest  beauty,  material,  asso- 
ciation, 237-39;  choice  of  style,  239;  com- 
position and  compositional  elements,  239- 
46;  inclosure  materials,  240-42;  retaining 
walls  and  banks,  240-41 ;  high  boundaries, 
241 ;  the  house  as  part  of  garden  boundary, 
242;  "floor"  materials,  242-44;  typical 
compositional  arrangements  of  the  garden 
floor,  243-44;  objects  marking  points  of 
interest  in  the  garden  composition,  244-46; 
suitability  of  different  objects  to  this  pur- 
pose, 245-46; 

the  garden  in  the  estate,  249;  as  affect- 
ing house  location,  255;  design  as  a  unit 
of  the  estate,  259-61 ;  in  apportionment  of 
estate  area,  274;  community  gardens  set 
aside  in  land  subdivision,  290;  refs.,  367, 
373-76.     See  also  Formal  gardens 

Gardens,  Public,  carpet  bedding  in,  182;  as 
part  of  recreation  system,  297 

Gardens,  Reserve,  in  the  estate,  265-66 

Gardens,  Rock,  207;   bridges  in,  218 

Gardens,  Vegetable,  in  the  estate,  265-66 

Gardens,  Wall,  re/.,  370 

Gardens,  Water,  ref.,  370 

Gardens  Old  and  New,  ref.,  375 

Garlands  between  posts,  as  boundary,  170 

Gartenkunst,  Die,  ref.,  362 

Garzoni  (Collodi),  Villa,  41 ;   illus.,  opp.  40 

Gate-lodges,  263-64 

Gates  and  gateways,  illusion,  117;  as  elements 
in  landscape  design,  209-10;  in  garden 
design,  241,  245;  from  forecourt  to  service 
court  in  the  estate,  271  ;  to  large  landscape 
parks,  318.     See  also  Entrance  gates 

Gayety,  a  landscape  effect,  82 

Gazebos,  196,  197,  262 

Gazing-globes,  210,  245,  262 

General  plans,  345 


Generaliffe,  35  ;   illus.,  opp.  j6 

Genius,  and  esthetic  analysis  in  design,   16; 

in  choice  of  ideal  in  design,  28 
Geniuses,  as  founders  of  artistic  tradition,  26 
"  Geometrical  "  styles  of  landscape  design,  34 
Gerhard,  W.  P.,  ref.,  381 
Germany,  Romantic  landscape  style  in,  47 ; 

modern  formal  style  of  landscape  design  in, 

51-54;    parks,  note,  226;    estates  and  gar- 
dens, ref.,  365,  375 
Gibson,  W.,  ref.,  370 
Gillett,  H.  P.,  ref.,  381 
Gilpin,  Rev.  William,  ref.,  370 
Giovio,  Villa,  41 
Girardin,  Rene  Louis,  Marquis  de,  note,  47 ; 

ref.,  368 
Githens,  A.  M.,  note,  194 
Glades,  composition  of  informal   boundaries 

of,  167-70 
Golf  courses,   in   the   large   landscape   park, 

305-6;   ref.,  376 
Gothein,  Marie  Luise,  ref.,  365 
Grading  plans,  345;  example,  illus.,  following 

356 
Granada,  gardens,  35 
"  Grand  style  "  (Le  Notre),  33,  42-45 
Grandeur,    an   effect   sought   in    style   of  Le 

Notre,  42-44;  in  Romantic  landscape  style, 

46;    a  landscape  effect,  79-81 ;    in  sequence 

of  landscape  effects,  85 
Gravel,  as  material  of  roads  and  paths,  219, 

227-28 
Gravetye  Manor,  illus.,  opp.  30 
Great  Britain,  estates  and  gardens,  refs.,  375 
Greenhouses,  264-65 

Gridiron  street  system,  in  land  subdivision,  283 
Grilles,  as  parapet,  200;    design,  207-9;    '" 

gates,  210 
Grottoes,  213-14 
Ground,  natural  forms,  as   basis  of  landscape 

character,  70;  as  elements  in  design,  130- 

50;   Repton  quotation,  note,  143;   refs.,  369 
Ground  cover,  in  planting  design,  182-83 
Ground     surface,    minor    modeling,    147-48; 

planting  in  relation  to,   183-85;    roads  in 

relation  to,  219-20.     See  also  Topography 
Groves,  significance  of  statuary  in,  211;    on 

the   estate,   268;    in   the   large   landscape 

park,  301-2 
Gutters,  219-20,  228 


INDEX 


391 


Hamerton,  Philip  Gilbert,  note,  81 ;  refs.,  366, 
372 

Hampton  Court,  192,  215 

Hanslick,  E.,  quoted,  13 

Hare,  S.  Herbert,  ref.,  377 

Hare,  Sid  J.,  ref.,  ip 

Harmony,  compositional,  and  harmony  of 
landscape  character,  31;  monotony, 
variety,  and,  94;    color  harmony,   107-10 

Harvard  College  "  Yard,"  226 

Harvard  University,  School  of  Landscape 
Architecture  Library,  361 

Haussmann,  Baron,  45 

Hearing,  sense  of,  consideration  in  landscape 
design,  7;  associational  appeal  to  emotion, 
14-IS 

Hearn,  Lafcadio,  nole,  80 

Hedges,  48,  199;  in  planting  design,  170-71; 
in  garden  design,  240,  241,  242;  as  screen 
of  service  yard,  263 

Herbaceous  beds,  176-79.  See  also  Flower 
beds 

Herbaceous  borders,  in  inclosing  plantations, 
168;  design,  176-77;  against  retaining 
walls,  200;  in  informal  gardens,  261;  in 
vegetable  gardens,  265 

Herbaceous  plants,  forms,  153-54;  flower  color, 
162-64;  in  List  of  Plants  to  accompany 
planting  plan  for  suburban  estate  near 
Boston,  Mass.,  360;  in  planting  design, 
rejs.,  369-71 

"  High-cost  "  land  subdivision  developments, 
278-80 

Highways,  state  and  national,  322 

Hills,  chosen  effect  of  country  house  on  hill, 
86-87;  illusions  of  character,  121 ;  as  focal 
point  of  vista,  125;  typical  forms,  131-32; 
in  landscape  composition,  132-33 ;  modi- 
fication of  effect  by  treatment  of  local 
details,  133-34;  planting  to  enhance  effect, 
166;  planting  in  relation  to,  184-85 ;  form 
of  buildings  crowning,  192 ;  form  relation 
of  buildings  in  landscape  to,  193 ;  land 
subdivision  on,  283-84 

Hillside  gardens,  Moghul,  36-39;  Italian, 
39742 

Hillside  location  of  house  in  estate,  255-56 

Hillside  lots,  284,  287 

Hillside  terraces,  design,  199 

Hilltop  location  of  house  in  estate,  255-56 


Hindu  symbolism,  in  Moghul  gardens,  36 
Hirschfeld,     Christian     Cayus     Lorenz,     52; 

note,  124;   ref.,  363 
Historic  styles  of  landscape  design,  see  Styles 

of  landscape  design 
History  of  landscape  architecture,  refs.,  364-66 
Holland,  gardens,  see  Dutch  garden  style 
Holme,  Charles,  note,  50;   ref.,  375 
Hooper,  Charles  Edward,  ref.,  372 
Hopkins,  Alfred,  note,  264;   ref.,  372 
Horticulture,  232;   Standard  Cyclopedia   of, 

'•</•;  369-70 

Hospital  grounds,  232 

Hotbeds,  265,  266 

Hour  of  day,  as  affecting  landscape  effects, 
83 

Houses,  planting  in  relation  to,  186-88,  ref., 
370;  the  house  as  part  of  garden  boundary, 
242;  as  an  element  of  the  estate,  249,  250- 
77 ;  effect  of  interior  arrangements  on  house 
form,  251-53;  form  as  affected  by  choice 
of  style,  253 ;  location  and  orientation, 
253-57 ;  relation  of  garden  to,  in  the  estate, 
259-61  ;  location  in  lots  in  land  subdivi- 
sion, 286-89;  location  and  character  re- 
strictions, in  land  subdivision,  292 ;  coun- 
try, ref.,  372 

House  terraces,  relation  to  the  garden,  242 ; 
in  the  estate,  249,  255,  257-58 

Housing,  low-cost  developments,  279-80 

Hubbard,  Henry  V.,  notes,  117,  266,  274,  330, 
337;   ref.,  362 

Hue,  in  color  composition,  106-7,  '09;  •" 
colors  in  landscape  composition,  in 

Humanized  styles  of  landscape  design,  char- 
acterized, 30;    a  category,  34 

Ideals,  and  beauty,  20;  origin,  21 ;  choice  in 
design,  27-28;  conscious  determination  by 
German  landscape  designers,  52 

Ideation,  see  Intellection 

Illusions  in  landscape  design,  relation  to 
logical  unity  of  design,  17;  in  Italian 
Baroque  garden  design,  41 ;  of  distance, 
n6;  in  landscape  composition,  116-22; 
of  material,  1 18-19;  of  shape,  1 19-20;  of 
size,  120-21 ;  of  character,  121 ;  associational 
illusions,  121-22 

Imagination,  sources  of  pleasure  in,  9-10; 
in  design,  28,  341 


392 


LANDSCAPE     DESIGN 


Impression,  esthetic,  19 

Impressions,  artist's  acquisition  of,  12 

Inclosing  plantations,  of  trees,  note,  155; 
design,  167-71  ;  in  apportionment  of  es- 
tate area,  274; 

informal  or  naturalistic :  in  modern 
American  landscape  style,  59 ;  in  composi- 
tion, 128;  suggestions  from  pond  shore 
forms,  138;  texture  considerations,  158; 
eflFects  of  foliage  color,  160-61  ;  design, 
168-70;  avoidance  of  formal  edgings,  171  ; 
herbaceous  plants  in,  176-77;  compared  to 
walls  and  fences,  204 

Inclosure,  of  a  landscape  composition,  90; 
of  a  garden,  234,  240-42 

India,  Moghul  style  of  landscape  design  in, 
36-39;    ref.,2,6s 

Individuality,  in  ideals,  21;  in  taste,  24-26; 
in  style,  28-29 

Informal,  indefiniteness  of  term,  34 

Informal  design,  of  American  small  estates, 
59;  maintenance,  61;  composition  de- 
pendent on  occult  balance,  97;  pictorial 
composition,  122;  objects  in,  according  to 
their  design  value,  128-29;  inclosing  plan- 
tations in,  167-70;  specimen  trees  and 
shrubs  in,  173;  shrubs  in,  176;  statuary 
in,  212;  roads  in  French  so-called  informal 
design,  note,  225 

Informal  gardens,  237,  259,  261 

Informal  styles,  a  category,  33-34 

Intellection,  process,  7-8 ;  sources  of  pleasure 
in,  lo-ll ;  pleasure  or  displeasure  of,  in  dis- 
covery of  an  illusion,  1 17-18 

Intensity  of  color,  in  color  composition, 
106-7,  109,  no;  in  landscape  composition, 
in;    in  representation  on  landscape  plans, 

348 
Iron  grilles,  in  fences  and  gates,  208-9 
Irrigation,  in  Moghul  gardens,  38 
Islands,    as    elements    in    design,    138;     ref., 

369 

Isola  Bella,  41,  120 

Italian  villas,  compared  to  Moghul  gardens, 
37;  of  Renaissance  and  Baroque  periods, 
styles  of,  39-42  ;  their  influence  in  England, 
49;  associational  incongruity  in  New  Eng- 
land, 60;  associational  pleasure  in,  61; 
demarcation  from  surroundings,  191 ;  refs., 
367,  376 


Japanese  styles  of  landscape  design,  54-57; 
spirit  of,  compared  to  modern  American 
landscape  style,  59;  relative  scale  in,  loi ; 
symbolic  use  of  plants  in,  note,  167 

Jekyll,  Gertrude,  note,  210;    refs.,  370,  372, 

373.  375 
Jets,  fountain,  36,  38,  215,  216 
Johnson,  George  W.,  ref.,  365 
Johnson,  J.  B.,  note,  344 
Jones,  Beatrix,  ref.,  368 

Karnes,  Lord,  quoted,  note,  83 
Kansas    City,    Mo.,    "  Country    Club    Dis- 
trict," note,  291 
Kehr,  Cyrus,  note,  322;   ref.,  379 
Kellaway,  Herbert  J.,  ref.,  374 
Kemp,  Edward,  ref.,  374 
Kennion,  Edward,  ref.,  370-71 
Kent,  William,  45 

Kimball,  Theodora,  note,  337;    refs.,  362,  380 
Klopstock,  Friedrich  Gottlieb,  45 
Knole,  note,  49 
Knots,  48 
Koch,  Hugo,  note,  102;   refs.,  365,  368,  378 

Labor,  utilization  in  landscape  construction, 

352 

Laborde,  Alexandre  de,  note,  47 

Lakes,  effect  of  large  lake  compared  to  that 
of  prairie,  64;  apparent  extent  increased, 
117;  effects  on  observer,  136;  as  elements 
in  design,  137-38;  effect  of  continuity  in- 
creased, 141 

Lamour,  Jean,  ironwork,  209 

Land  subdivision,  as  type  of  landscape  de- 
sign, 232,  275-94;  3S  a  business  venture, 
275 ;    items  of  expense   to   the   developer, 

275-76; 

salable  assets  produced  by  development, 
276-78  :  room,  276-77 ;  proximity  to  town, 
277;  convenience,  277;  social  desirability, 
277;    amenity,  277;    beauty,  277-78 ; 

"  low-cost  "  and  "  high-cost  "  develop- 
ments, 278-80;  professional  advice  in,  280; 
procedure  in  design,  280-91  ;  choice  of 
type  of  development  in  relation  to  develop- 
ment of  city,  280-82 ; 

street  system,  282-83  ;  alleys,  282-83  ; 
characteristic  effects  of  street  systems, 
283 ;    streets   in    relation   to   topography, 


INDEX 


393 


283-84;  sub-surface  utilities,  284;  street 
widths,  284-85 ;  roadways  and  planting 
strips,  285  ;   sidewalks,  285-86; 

lots,  286-89:  sizes,  286;  width  and 
depth,  286-87;  shape,  287-88;  orientation, 
288-89; 

reserved  areas,  289-91 ;  restrictions,  291- 
93  ;  districting,  293-94  >  professional  charges 
of  landscape  architect,  328;    refs.,  379 

Landscape,  "  free,"  68 ;    man's  need  of,  75 

Landscape  appreciation,  development,  12; 
quotation  from  Shaler,  12-13  >    '■'/-'■■>  366-67 

Landscape  architect,  duty  in  preservation  of 
characteristic  scenery,  74;  feeling  for  main 
architectural  effect,  193-94;  as  interpreting 
the  client's  desires  in  design  of  estate,  249; 
assistance  to  client  in  choice  of  site  for 
estate,  273 ;  professional  advice  in  land 
subdivision,  280;  opportunity  in  national 
planning,  323;  professional  standing,  defi- 
nition, 326;  relations  with  client  and 
contractor,  332-33  ;  cooperation  with  other 
practitioners,  333-34,  in  city  planning,  334. 
See  also  Landscape  architecture 

Landscape  architect's  office,  328-29;  organiza- 
tion and  equipment,  334-37;  clerical  force, 
334-35;  technical  office  and  field  force, 
335-36;   office  reference  material,  336-37 

Landscape  architecture,  definition,  i  ;  prov- 
ince, 1-2;  development  as  a  separate  pro- 
fession, 2-3 ;  requirements  for  profession, 
3-4;  preparation  for  profession,  4-5;  op- 
portunities and  rewards  of  profession,  5 ; 
types  of  designs,  232  ; 

professional  practice  in  America,  325- 
37;  refs.,  381;  professional  degrees,  325; 
professional  conduct,  325-26;  professional 
charges,  326-28;  professional  reputation, 
328-29;  professional  advertising  and  pub- 
licity, 329-31 ;  professional  announcements, 
331;  public  exhibitions,  331 ;  competitions, 

332; 

classification,  337;  selected  list  of  refer- 
ences on,  361-81 
Landscape  Architecture,  quarterly,  rej.,  362 
Landscape  character,  defined,  22 ;  interpre- 
tation of,  31;  illusions  of,  in  composition, 
121  ;  relation  of  plant  character  to,  165-66; 
buildings  subordinate  to,  189-90;  park 
buildings  subordinate  to,  316;    relation  to 


making  of  roads   and   paths   in   the   land- 
scape park,  309 

Landscape  characters,  62-75 ;  emotional  ef- 
fect increased  by  designers  of  Romantic 
landscape  style,  46;  development  in  mod- 
ern American  landscape  style,  58-59; 
physical  origin,  62-63  ;  as  parallel  to  styles, 
63-64 ;   names,  64-65  ; 

examples,  64-70:  prairie,  64-65  ;  barren 
or  tundra,  65-66;  sand  dunes,  66;  Sequoia 
grove,  66-67  >  Sierra  mountain  meadow, 
67-68;  bushy  pasture,  68-69;  English 
pastoral  landscape,  69-70; 

design  in,  70-72 ;  in  relation  to  economic 
use  and  maintenance,  72-74;  effects  in, 
84-85 ;  roadside  planting  developed  to 
accord  with,  223  ;  character  units  in  design 
of  the  estate,  268-69;  considered  in  choice 
of  site  for  estate,  273  ; 

character  units  available  for  the  large 
landscape  park,  299-300;  park  use  and, 
301;  best  fitted  to  park  uses,  301-5; 
pastoral  landscape,  301-2 ;  wooded  land- 
scape, 302-3 ;  rocks  and  ledges,  303 ; 
brooks  and  ponds,  303-4;  character  units 
separated  by  park  roads,  311 

Landscape  composition,  88-129;  compared 
with  composition  in  painting,  88-89; 
within  the  visual  angle,  92 ;    larger  unity, 

92-93; 

characteristics  of  objects  in,  98-129: 
shape,  98-101 ;  size,  scale,  and  distance, 
101-3 ;  texture,  103-4;  color,  104-11; 
light  and  shade,  111-13;  atmosphere  and 
atmospheric  perspective,  113-16;  illusions 
in,  116-22;  as  exemplified  in  the  garden, 
239-46; 

landscape  compositions,  122-29;  objects 
in,  according  to  their  design  value,  128-29; 
temporary  elements,  129;    hill  and  moun- 
tain   forms  in,    132-33  ;     differentiation  of 
design   units   by  contrast  of  foliage  color, 
160;   in  the  landscape  park,  305; 
refs.,  368 
Landscape  construction,  see  Construction 
Landscape  design,  theory,  6-23,  refs.,  366-67; 
defined,  6;    esthetic  and  economic  aspects, 
6-7 ;   psychological  basis  of  esthetic  theory, 
7-16;   esthetic  analysis  in,  16;   teaching  of, 
26;    criticism  in,  26-27;    self-criticism  in, 


394 


LANDSCAPE     DESIGN 


27;    value  of  knowledge  of  natural  forms 
in,  130-31  ;    use  of  office  force  in  designing, 

335-36; 

procedure  in  design,  338-53;  methods 
in  designing,  340-42 ;  sequential  decisions 
in,  340-41 ;   imagination  in,  341 ; 

representation  of  design,  342-51 :  models, 
342-43  ;  pictures  and  plans,  343  ;  written 
statements,  343-44;  verbal  directions  and 
explanations,  345 

Landscape  designs,  types,  231-323,  refs.,  'iJ'i- 
81 ;  classified  according  to  typical  uses, 
231-32 

Landscape  effect,  defined,  22-23  >  ^s  a 
criterion  of  style  and  character,  76;  and 
landscape  composition,  93 

Landscape  effects,  76-87;  in  Japanese  styles, 
55-56;  of  prairie,  64;  of  barren  or  tundra, 
65;  of  Sierra  mountain  meadow,  68; 
taste  in,  76 ;  variety  of,  77 ;  literary  dis- 
cussions of,  77 ; 

examples,  77-82  :  the  "  beautiful  "  and 
the  "  picturesque,"  77-79;  sublimity,  79- 
81;  desolation,  81;  melancholy,  81-82; 
gayety,  82 ;    mystery,  82-83  ; 

effects  from  transitory  conditions,  83 ; 
harmony  and  contrast,  83-84;  effects  in 
landscape  characters,  84-85 ;  effects  in 
styles,  85-86;  design  in  effects,  86-87; 
from  hills  and  mountains,  valleys,  plains, 
and  bodies  of  water,  130-37;  in  the  land- 
scape park,  Olmsted  quotation,  note,  299; 
of  park  scenes,  305.  See  also  Emotional 
effects 

Landscape  maintenance,  see  Maintenance 

Landscape  painters,  as  inspiration  of  land- 
scape style,  45 

Landscape  painting,  ref.,  368 

Landscape  parks,  see  Parks,  Landscape 

Landscape  reservations,  see  Reservations, 
Landscape 

"  Landscape  School,"  46 

Landscape  style,  Romantic,  45-47 ;  modern 
American,  57-59;  inspiration  from  English 
pastoral  landscape,  70 

Landscape  superintendence,  see  Superintend- 
ence 

Lante,  Villa,  40,  209,  215;  illus.,  23,  plates 
19,  29 

Lanterns,  garden,  55,  56 


Latham,  Charles,  ref.,  376 

Lattices,  covered  with  vines,  170,  172;  as 
building  decoration,  188;  shelters,  198; 
fences,  205,  207-9;    '"  garden  design,  242 

Laundry  yard,  263 

Lawns,  in  historic  styles  of  landscape  design, 
48,  58,  59;  shadows  on,  112,  1 13;  in 
composition,  122,  123;  suggestions  from 
pond  shore  forms,  138;  composition  of 
informal  boundaries,  167-70;  in  planting 
design,  183;  in  the  estate,  249;  as  in- 
formal garden,  261 ;  as  unit  of  the  estate, 
267-68 ;  in  apportionment  of  estate  area, 
274;    ref.,  371 

Lay,  Charles  Downing,  note,  332;  rejs.,  362, 
378 

Ledges,  planting  to  enhance  character,  71 ; 
in  waterfalls,  142;  in  naturalistic  design, 
145-46;  steps  along,  203;  in  large  land- 
scape parks,  303 

Leipzig,  Mariannenpark,  226 

Le  Notre,  Andre,  his  style  of  landscape  de- 
sign, 29,  33,  42-45,  52;  imitators,  44; 
note,  47;    ref.,  365 

Leonardo  da  Vinci,  quoted,  note,  114 

Lettering  on  landscape  plans,  349;  composi- 
tion of,  351 

Lewis,  Nelson  P.,  ref.,  380 

Light,  color  and,  105-6;  as  affecting  loca- 
tion   and   orientation   of   house    in   estate, 

,253-57 

Light  and  shade,  effect  of  gayety,  82 ;  as 
affecting  landscape  effects,  83  ;  in  composi- 
tion, 1 1 1- 13;  unity  in  landscape  composi- 
tion, 111-12;  variability,  112-13;  differ- 
entiation of  planes  of  distance,  127;  of 
reflections   in  pools,   216 

Light  standards  in  the  large  landscape  park, 
316-17 

Line,  character  of,  in  representation  on  land- 
scape plans,  348 

Lipps,  Theodore,  note,  14 

Literary  discussions  of  landscape  effects,  77 

Literary  influences  on  landscape  design,  46 

Lots  in  land  subdivision,  salable  assets,  276- 
78;  hillside,  284;  sizes,  286;  width  and 
depth,  286-87;  shape,  287-88;  orientation, 
288-89;    restrictions,  291-93 

Loudon,  John  Claudius,  refs.,  363,  367,  371 

Louis  XIV,  33.  37.  8S 


INDEX 


395 


"  Low-cost  "  land  subdivision  developments, 

278-80 
Lowell,  Guy,  ref.,  375 
Lutyens,  E.  L.,  nou,  49 
Lux,  J.  A.,  note,  52 
Lyie,  William  T.,  ref.,  381 

Macadam,  as  material  of  roads  and  paths, 

219,  228 
Macartney,  Mervyn,  note,  49;    ref.,  375 
MaccuUoch,  quoted,  note,  81 
Madama,  Villa,  40 
Maintenance,  relation  to  choice  of  st>-Ie.  60-61 ; 

landscape  characters  in  relation  to,  72-74; 

relation    of     planting    design     and,     153; 

of  roads,  note,  220;    relation  to  design  of 

estate,   273-74;    superintendence    of,    353; 

refs.,  381 
Major,  Joshua,  note,  175 
Manning,  Warren  H.,  refs.,  362,  376 
Marcus.  Hugo,  note,  133;   refs.,  367,  368 
Mariannenpark,  Leipzig,  226 
Mart,  John  E.,  rff.,  369 
Masonry,  steps,  204;    walls,  205-6 
Materials  of  construction,  effect  on   historic 

styles  of  landscape  design,  29 ;    illusions  of, 

in  composition,  118-19;  materials  of  walls 

and  fences,  205-9;  of  roads  and  paths,  227- 

30;   of  bridges,  217-18 
Mawson,  Thomas    H.,   note,  210;   refs.,   372, 

374.  380 
Meadows,  composition  of  informal  boundaries, 

167-70;    Sierra  mountain  meadow,  a  land- 
scape character,  67-68 
Melancholy,  an  eflPect    sought    in    Romantic 

landscape    style,    46;     a    landscape    effect, 

81-82 
Mereville,  note,  47 
Mero,  Everett  B.,  ref.,  378 
Metropolitan  landscape  reservations,  318-21 
Meyer,  Franz  Sales,  note,  176;    ref.,  363 
Migge,  Leberecht,  54;    refs.,  367,  373 
Miller,  Wilhelm,  note,  65;    ref.,  371 
Models,  as  representarion  of  landscape  design, 

342-43 
Moghul  style  of  landscape  design  in  India, 

36-39;    note,  167;    ref,  36; 
Monotony,  in  composition,  94;    in  planting, 

caused  by  too  minute  variety,  160;    Price 

quotation,  note,  164 


Mont  St.  Michel,  192 

Moorish  stj-le  of  landscape  design  in  Spain, 

J  J  .1 '-' 

Motoring,  provision  for,  in  the  large  landscap>e 
park,  306 

Mountain  meadow.  Sierra,  a  landscape  char- 
acter, 67-68 

Mountains,  s^Tnbolic  representation  in 
Japanese  gardens,  55 ;  giving  effect  of 
sublimity,  79;  in  pictorial  composirion,  123, 
125,  12S;  typical  forms,  131-32;  in  land- 
scape composition,  132-33 

Mounts,  in  Tudor  gardens,  48 

Municipal  forests,  320-21;  treatment  with 
regard  to  landscape  character,  72-73 

Municipal  landscape  resei^^ations,  31S-21 

Municipal  water-supply  areas,  321 ;  combina- 
tion with  municipal  forests,  72-73 

Muscular  activity,  feelings  of,  consideration 
in  landscape  design,  7;  intensification  of 
emotion  from,  13-14;  in  perception  of 
shape,  98 

Music,  analogy-  to  visual  impressions,  Hans- 
lick  quotation,  note,   13 

Music  courts,  in  the  large  landscape  park,  305 

Music  gro%-es,  in  the  large  landscape  park, 
i02,  305 

Muskau,  Ulus.,  plate  21 

Muthesius,  Hermann,  note,  52;   ref.,  374 

Myster}",  a  landscape  effect,  82-83  >  effect  of 
moist  atmosphere,  115;  effect  in  planta- 
tions, 168 

National  Conference  on  City  Planning,  note, 
287,  293  ;    refs.,  379,  380 

National  forests,  relation  to  national  parks, 
^22 

National  highways.  322 

National  Park  Conference,  ref.,  378 

National  parks  and  reservations,  321-22  ;  ref., 
.378 

National  planning.  323 

Naturalistic  design,  illusions  of  character, 
121;  pictorial  composition,  122;  ground, 
rock,  and  water  as  elements,  130-50;  in- 
closing plantations,  167-70;  specimen  trees 
and  shrubs  in,  173;  tree  and  shrub  groups 
in,  173-74;  shrubs  in,  176;  ground  cover  in, 
182-83;  planting  and  topography.  1S3-85; 
waterside  planting,  185-86;  steps  in,  203-4; 


396 


LANDSCAPE     DESIGN 


statuary  in,  212;    roads  in,  219-24;    tree 
planting   along   roads   in,    223 ;     paths   in, 
224-25.     See  also  Landscape  character 
Naturalistic  styles  of  landscape  design,  char- 
acterized, 30-31;    a  category,  34 
Nature,  inspiration  of  landscape  style,  45-46; 
inspiration  of  Japanese  styles,  55 ;    man's 
need  of  contact  with,  75 
Netherlands,  gardens,  ref.,  365 
New  England  bushy  pasture,  68 ;  walls  in,  207 
New  England  colonial  style  of  landscape  design, 

SCH-si 
New  York,  Central  Park,  58 ;   note,  308 
New  York  Commission  on  Building  Districts 

and  Restrictions,  note,  281 
Niches,  125,  199,  203  ;  for  wall  fountains,  213- 

14;    in  garden  design,  241,  246 
Nichols,  J.  C,  notes,  291,  293;   ref.,  379 
Nichols,  Rose  Standish,  ref.,  365 
Night  effects  in  Moghul  gardens,  37 
Nishat  Bagh,  37 

Nolen,  John,  note,  279;    ref.,  380 
North-point,  on  landscape  plans,  350,  351 
Novelty,  effect  in  composition,  91-92 

Occult  balance,  97.     See  also  Balance 
Office  of  landscape  architect,  see  Landscape 

architect's  office 
Old-fashioned  garden,  238 
Olmsted,    Frederick    Law,    St.,    29,    57,    58 ; 

quoted,  notes,  18,  299;    refs.,  378 
Olmsted,    Frederick   Law,   Jr.,    quoted,   note, 

82-83;    7iotes,  18,  201,  287,  307,  322,  333; 

refs.,  376,  379,  380,  381 
Olmsted,  John   Charles,   refs.,  369,   371,   377 
Orangery,  at  Versailles,  44 
Order  in  composition,  objective  and  subjec- 
tive, 89-90;    forms  of,  93-97 
Oriental  gardening,  ref.,  364 
Orientation,  of  buildings  in  groups,  194;    of 

house  in   estate,    253-55;   of  lots  in    land 

subdivision,     288-89;    objects    shown     on 

plan,  350 
Originality,  in  design,  28 ;    from  topographic 

conditions  in  garden  design,  238 
Outdoor  recreation  areas,  classification,  296- 

97;   relation  to  the  city  plan,  297-98 

Paint,  color  of  painted  buildings  in  relation 
to  landscape,  195-96;  of  painted  fences,  208 


Painter,  comparison  with  landscape  designer, 
88,  90,   151,  162,  342 

Palmieri,  Villa,  40;    illus.,  opp.  lOO 

Panels,  sunk,  244 

Parapets,  199-200;  as  parts  of  the  garden 
boundary,  240-41 

Paris,  Fare  Monceau,  212;  Alphand's  Prom- 
enades, ref.,  377 

Park  furniture,  316-17 

Park  reports,  ref.,  362 

Park  systems,  municipal,  classification  of 
outdoor  recreation  areas,  296-97;  their 
relation  to  the  city  plan,  297-98 ;  stability 
and  convertibility  of  park  units,  299; 
relation  to  circulatory  system  of  the  large 
landscape  park,  308-9 

Parks,  ethical  value,  note,  17-18;  in  modern 
German  formal  style,  53-54,  note,  226; 
in  modern  American  landscape  style,  58- 
59",  Downing's  editorials,  note,  57;  carpet 
bedding  in,  182;  turf  in,  183;  pavilions  in, 
197;  significance  and  setting  of  statuary 
in,  212;  roads,  crossings,  222;  area  re- 
served for,  in  land  subdivision,  289,  290, 
291 ;  the  intoven  park  as  part  of  recreation 
system,  297-98 ; 

the  landscape  park  as  a  type  of  landscape 
design,  232,  295-320;  development  of 
landscape  character  units,  71 ;  planting, 
F.  L.  Olmsted,  Jr.,  quoted,  note,  83  ;  the 
large  landscape  park  as  part  of  recreation 
system,  297-98 ;  design  of  the  large  land- 
scape park,  298-318;  site  and  available 
landscape  character  units,  299-300;  extent 
and  seclusion,  300-1 ;  park  use  and  land- 
scape units,  301  ;  landscape  characters  best- 
fitted  to  park  uses,  301-5  ;  pastoral  land- 
scape, 301-2;  wooded  landscape,  302-3; 
rocks  and  ledges,  303  ;  brooks  and  ponds, 
303-4;  uses  properly  served  by  a  landscape 
park,  305-8;  access  and  entrances,  308-9; 
circulation,  309-14;  roads,  309-11;  bridle 
paths,  311;  footpaths,  311-13;  inter- 
relation of  roads  and  paths,  313-14;  build- 
ings properly  serving  park  uses,  314-16; 
buildings  in  relation  to  the  park  landscape, 
316;  minor  structures:  park  furniture, 
316-17;  boundaries  and  gates,  318; 
refs.,  377-79;    construction,  ref.,  381 

Parkways,  as    part  of   municipal    recreation 


INDEX 


397 


system,  297-98 ;  leading  to  landscape  park 
entrance,  ?o8;    state  parkways,  322 

Parsons,  Samuel,  note,  225;  refs.,  363,  367, 
369,  371,  373  , 

Parterres,  in  style  of  Le  Notre,  43  ;  planting 
design,  180-82;  as  increasing  dominance  of 
buildings  in  landscape,  191;  and  terraces, 
198 

Pastoral  landscape,  in  England,  a  landscape 
character,  69-70;  peaceful  effect,  78;  in 
the  large  landscape  park,  301-2 

Pasture,  bushy,  in  New  England,  a  landscape 
character,  68-69 

Paths,  in  composition,  128;  edgings,  171;  as 
increasing  dominance  of  buildings  in  land- 
scape, 191;  texture  of  walks,  195;  along 
edge  of  terraces,  199;  steps  and,  202-4; 
gates  on  footpaths,  209;  and  bridges, 
216-17;  as  elements  in  landscape  design, 
218-19;  in  naturalistic  design,  224-25; 
form,  224-25  ;  in  relation  to  park  traffic, 
225;  in  formal  design,  226-27;  materials 
of  paths,  227-30;  paths  in  garden  design, 
243-44,  246;  in  vegetable  and  reser\-e 
gardens,  265  ;  in  the  design  of  the  estate, 
271-72;  in  rocky  parts  of  landscape  parks, 
303  ;  along  brooks  and  ponds  in  landscape 
parks,  303-4;  relation  of  path  system  of 
the  landscape  park  to  city  street  system, 
308 ;  footpaths  in  the  large  landscape 
park,  311-13;  interrelation  with  roads  and 
bridle  paths,  313-14;  refs.,  372.  See  also 
Bridle  paths 

Pavilions,  see  Shelters  and  pavilions 

Paving,  as  man-made  rockwork,  143  ;  of  roads 
and  paths,  227-30 

Peacefulness  as  a  landscape  effect,  78 

Penshurst,  note,  49 

Perception,  process,  7-8 ;  sources  of  pleasure 
in,  9-10 

Perennials,  in  flower  beds,   178-79 

Perfection,  in  design,  28 

Pergolas,  196,  197,  241,  244,  262 

Periodicals  devoted  to  landscape  architecture, 
refs.,  362 

Persian  gardens,  influence  on  Moorish  gardens 
in  Spain,  35  ;  on  Moghul  gardens  in  India,  36 

Perspective,   effects  of,    102-3 

Perspective,  Atmospheric,  see  Atmospheric 
perspective 


Perspectives,  rendered,  suggestion  of  distance 

in,  116 
Petraia,  Villa,  40 
Petzold,  Eduard,  52 
Photographic  surveying,  340 
Picnic   groves,   in  the  large  landscape  park, 

315 

Pictorial  composition,  see  Gsmposition,  Land- 
scape composition 

Pictorial  compositions,  and  landscape 
character,  71;  landscape,  122-25;  typical 
kinds,      123-24;       example:       the      vista. 

Pictorial  representation  of  landscape  design, 

"  Picturesque,"  literary  discussions  of  term 
as  opposed  to  "beautiful,"  77-78;  appli- 
cation in  design,  78-79;  Price's  Essay  on 
on  the,  ref.,  367 

Plains,  style  of  Le  Notre  adapted  to,  43 ; 
prairies,  64;  large,  giving  effect  of  sublim- 
it}'' 79;  typical  forms  and  effects,  136; 
minor  modeling  of  surface,  147-48;  form 
of  building  on,  192;  location  of  house  in 
estate  on,  255,  257 

Planes  of  distance,  115;  in  composition,  126- 
28 

Plans,  as  mode  of  representation  of  landscape 
design,  343  ;  seriesforlandscape  job,  345-46; 
as  records  of  ideas  and  as  decorative  objects, 
346-47;  expression  of  relative  importance 
of  objects  represented,  348;  character  of 
line,  348 ;  color,  value,  and  intensity  of 
color,  348;  lettering  on,  349;  use  of  color, 
349;  conventionalit}' of  representation,  349; 
border  lines,  350;  north-point,  350;  orien- 
tation of  objects  on,  350;  representation  of 
shadows,  350;  composition  of  title,  north- 
point,  notes,  etc.,  351  ;  uniformity  in  pres- 
entation in  office  practice,  351 ;  typical 
drawings  for  a  landscape  job  :  plans  for  the 
development  of  a  suburban  estate,  355-56 
and  illus.  following 

Plant  materials  of  landscape  design,  see  Plants, 
Vegetation 

Plant  names,  standardized,  1917  Official  Gsde, 
note,  357 

Plantations,  effects  of  foliage  color,  160-61 ; 
design,  167-83.  See  also  Inclosing  planta- 
tions 


398 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Planting,  rock,  145-46, 147;  as  surface  decora- 
tion, 179-83 ;  in  relation  to  topography, 
183-85;  waterside,  185-86;  in  relation  to 
architectural  structures,]!  86-88 ;  as  enframe- 
ment,  186-87 !  ^s  transition  between  ground 
and  structure,  187-88;  as  decoration  of 
structures,  188;  of  terrace  banks,  200-1; 
of  walls,  206 ;  on  and  along  fences,  207-9 ; 
of  grottoes,  213;  of  pools,  216;  in  relation 
to  bridges,  217;  at  road  intersections,  221  ; 
enframing  views  along  roads,  222 ;  roadside, 
223-24;    in  stone  slab  paths,  230 

Planting  design,  151-88;  time  element  in, 
152;  relation  to  maintenance,  153;  refs., 
369-71.      See  also  Gardens,  Estates,  Parks 

Planting  lists,  345  ;  example,  List  of  Plants  to 
accompany  planting  plan  for  a  suburban 
estate  near  Boston,  Mass.,  357-60 

Planting  plans,  345  ;  intellective  pleasure  in 
production  of,  11;  example,  illus.,  follow- 
ing, 356 

Planting  strips,  223  ;  on  streets  in  land  sub- 
division, 285 

Plants,  as  material  in  landscape  design,  151-52; 
characteristics,  in  landscape  design,  153; 
forms,  153-57;  texture,  157-58;  color,  159- 
64;  species  and  character,  164-65  ;  individ- 
ual character,  165  ;  character  and  environ- 
ment, 165;  relation  of  plant  character  and 
landscape  character,  165-66;  "expression" 
and  character,  166;  association  and  sym- 
bolism, 166-67;  grouping  according  to 
character  in  herbaceous  beds,  179;  in  the 
garden,  235-36;  individual  beauty  in  in- 
formal garden,  237;  choice  of,  as  giving 
distinctiveness  to  garden,  238.  See  also 
Herbaceous  plants.  Shrubs,  Trees 

Piatt,  Charles  A.,  7iote,  61 

Playfields,  as  part  of  recreation  system,  297-98 ; 
relegation  to,  from  landscape  park,  of  noisy 
sports,  306-7 

Playgrounds,  as  type  of  landscape  design,  232  ; 
area  reserved  for,  in  land  subdivision,  289; 
in  block  centers,  290 ;  as  part  of  recreation 
system,  296-98 ;  relation  to  landscape 
parks,  307;    refs.,  377-79 

Pleached  arbors,  48 

Pleasure,  final  product  of  esthetic  design,  7; 
kinds,  8 ;  sources  of,  in  sensation,  8-9, 
in   perception  and   imagination,  9-10,     in 


intellection,  lo-ii;  beauty  and,  20;  from 
repetition,  sequence,  and  balance  in  compo- 
sition, 97;  intellective,  in  discovery  of 
illusions,  11 7- 18 

Pleasure  buildings  in  the  estate,  249 

Poggio  a  Cajano,  Villa,  40 

Poles  and  wires,  considerations  in  land  sub- 
division, 284;  restrictions  as  to  location,  293 

Ponds,  in  composition,  121,  123  ;  as  elements 
in  landscape  design,  137-38;  bowlders  on 
shores,  145;  shore  planting,  185-86;  in 
large  landscape  parks,  303-4 

Pools,  in  historic  styles  of  landscape  design, 
36,  40,  41,  43,  48  ;  in  composition,  117,  119, 
123,  128;  enframed  by  steps,  203;  as 
elements  in  landscape  design,  215-16;  in 
garden   design,    241,    243-44 

Pools,  swimming,  on  the  estate,  266;  as  part 
of  recreation  system,   297 

Pope,  Alexander,  45 

Post-finials,  210 

Potting  sheds,  264,  265 

Practice,  professional,  of  landscape  architec- 
ture, see  Landscape  architecture,  professional 
practice 

Prairie,  a  landscape  character,  64-65 

Pray,  James  Sturgis,  ref.,  380 

Preliminary  plan,  345  ;  example,  illus.,  follow- 
ing, 356 

Preservation  of  scenery,   74-7S 

Price,  Sir  Uvedale,  52;  quoted,  notes,  89,  113, 
173-74;    '•^/■f-.  367.  368 

Professional  practice  of  landscape  architec- 
ture, see  Landscape  architecture,  professional 
practice 

Profiles,  345;    example,  illus.,  following,  356 

Progression,    in    composition,   96 

Promenades,  relation  to  the  large  landscape 
park,  305-6,  307-8,  315 

Psychological  basis  of  esthetic  theory  of 
design,  7-16 

Public  buildings,  grounds  as  type  of  landscape 
design,  232;   avoidance  in  landscape  parks. 

Public  gardens,  carpet  bedding  in,  182;  as 
part  of  recreation  system,  297 

Publicity,  in  professional  practice  of  land- 
scape architecture,  329-31 

Puckler-Muskau,  Hermann  Ludwig  Heinrich, 
Furst  von,  47,  52,  225 ;   ref.,  363-64 


INDEX 


399 


Railroad-gardening,  ref.,  376 

Ramps,  191,  202 

Ramps,  water,  41,  214-15 

Random  rubble  masonry,  118 

Rannoch,  moor  of,  quotation,  note,  81 

Real  estate  expert,  and  landscape  architect, 
280 

Real  estate  subdivision,  see  Land  subdivision 

Recreation,  man's  need  of,  295-96 

Recreation  areas,  out-door,  classification,  296- 
97;    relation  to  the  city  plan,  297-98 

Recreation  centers,  as  part  of  recreation  sys- 
tem, 297-98 

Reed,  Lieut.  Henry  A.,  note,  340 

Reference  material,  in  the  landscape  archi- 
tect's office,  336-37 

References  on  landscape  architecture,  361-81 

Reflections,  in  water  surfaces  in  landscape, 
137;  of  planting  in  water  surfaces,  185-86; 
in  formal  pools,  215-16;    of  bridges,  217 

"  Regular  "  styles  of  landscape  design,  34 

Renaissance  villas  in  Italy,  style  of,  39-42 

Repetition,  in  composition,  94;  sequence  of, 
94-95  ;  intensification  of  emotion  from,  97- 
98;  of  shapes  in  composition,  100;  of 
textures  in  composition,  104;  in  color 
composition,  109;  in  mountain  forms,  133; 
in  garden  design,  236-37 

Representation  of  landscape  design,  342-51; 
example :  presentation  of  landscape  plans, 
346-51 ;   conventionality  of,  on  plan,  349 

Repton,  Humphrey,  quoted,  11;  note,  45; 
style  of,  47,  49,  52 ;  note,  58 ;  quoted,  93  ; 
quoted,  no/*",  143  ;  note,  26J;  ri'/r.,  364,  367, 
368 

Reputation,  professional,  of  landscape  archi- 
tect, 328-29 

Reservations,  Forest,  see  Forests 

Reservations,  Landscape,  combination  with 
municipal  forests,  treated  with  regard  to 
landscape  character,  72-73 ;  as  type  of 
landscape  design,  232;  need  for,  295-96;  as 
part  of  recreation  system,  297-98 ;  Munici- 
pal and  Metropolitan,  318-21 ;  combination 
with  other  uses,  320-21 ;  State  and  National, 
321-22 

Reservations,  Water-supply,  72-73,  321 

Reserve  gardens,  in  the  estate,  265-66 

Reserved  areas,  in  land  subdivision,  289-91 

Reservoirs,  ref.,  379 


Restaurants,  in  the  large  landscape  park,  315 
Restrictions  in  land  subdivision,  291-93 
Retaining  walls,  see  Walls,  Retaining 
Rhythm,    in    composition,    95-96;     in    color 

composition,  108,  no 
Riding,  provision  for,  in  the  large  landscape 

park,  306 
Ries,  Friedrich,  note,  176;  ref.,  363 
Rivers,  entering  lakes,  138;  as  elements  in 
landscape  design,  140-42.  See  also  Streams 
Roads,  as  example  of  sequence,  94-95  ;  banks, 
149;  as  increasing  dominance  of  build- 
ings in  landscape,  191;  and  bridges,  216-17; 
as  elements  in  landscape  design,  218-24, 
225-29;  in  naturalistic  landscape,  219-24; 
form,  220-21 ;  intersections,  221-22;  views 
of  and  from,  222-23;  planting,  223-24;  as 
demarcating  design  units,  223-24;  paths 
along,  224;  in  formal  design,  225-26; 
materials  of  roads,  219,  227-29;  approach 
roads  in  the  estate,  269-71 ;  relation  of 
road  system  of  the  landscape  park 
to  city  street  system,  308;  in  large  land- 
scape parks,  309-11,  interrelation  with 
paths,  313-14;  refs.,  372.  See  also  Streets 
Robinson,  Charles  Mulford,  7iotes,  282,  329; 

'•^/'■f-.  379.  380,  381 
Robinson,  William,  refs.,  371,  373,  374 
Rock,  natural   forms  as  elements  in  design, 

130-50;    refs.,  369 
Rock  gardens,  207,  238;    bridges  in,  218 
Rock  planting,  143,  147,  166,  206-7,  230 
Rocks,  in  waterfalls,  142;    in  naturalistic  de- 
sign, 143-47;    color   and   texture,    146;    in 
large  landscape  parks,  303 
Rockwork,  in  grottoes,  214 
Roland  Park,  Baltimore,  Md.,  280 
Romantic  landscape  style,  45-47;   name,  33; 
compared    with    modern    German    formal 
style,  54;   comparison  with  Japanese  styles, 
55;  notes,  77,  167 
Romantic  styles,  a  category,  33 
Rome,  St.  Peter's,  illus.,  opp.  122 
Rome,  Ancient,  sculptural  remains  in  Italian 

gardens,  39 
Ross,  Dr.  Denman  W.,  note,  93  ;  quoted,  94-96 
Rousseau,  Jean  Jacques,  46 
Ruins,  in  Romantic  landscape  style,  46;    as 

associational  illusions,  121 
Rustic-work  bridges,  218 


400 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Sailing  ship,  example  of  esthetic  from 
economic  unity,  i8 

St.  Catherine's  Court,  Somerset,  illus.,  opp. 
48 

St.  Cloud,  44 

St.  Germain,  44 

Salem,  Nichols  garden,  illus.,  plate  5 

Salisch,  Heinrich  von,  ref.,  371 

Sand  dunes,  a  landscape  character,  66 

Santayana,  George,  quoted,  20;    7iote,  21 

Sargent,  C.  S.,  ref.,  362 

Scale,  in  Japanese  garden  design,  55,  56;  in 
composition,  101-3  ;  absolute  and  relative, 
loi ;  indication  in  landscape  composition, 
101-2  ;    steps  as  giving,  201 

Scale  relation,  between  rock  and  planting, 
147;  between  texture  and  form  in  plants, 
157;  in  carpet  bedding,  181;  of  objects  in 
garden  design,  246;  of  shelters  and  house 
as  part  of  same  composition,  262 

Scenery,  characteristic,  value  and  preserva- 
tion, 74-75.     See  also  Landscape 

Scent,  in  garden  design,  14-15,  35.  37 

Schneider,  Camillo  Karl,  52;    ref.,  367 

Schools,  area  reserved  for,  in  land  sub- 
division,  289-90 

"  Schools,"  of  design,  25-26 

Schools,  professional,  study  of  landscape 
architecture  in,  4 

Schultze-Naumburg,  Paul,  note,  52;    ref.,  374 

Sckell,  Friedrich  Ludwig  von,  47,  52 

Scotland,  gardens,  ref.,  375 

Scott,  Geoffrey,  note,  79 

Screen,  wall  or  fence  as,  204;  composed  of 
separate  objects  seen  in  perspective,  235; 
of  service  yard,  263 

Screen  plantations,  104,  170,  184;  around 
garden,  235-36 

Sculptor,  comparison  with  landscape  designer, 
90,  151,  152,  342 

Sculpture,  see  Statuary 

Sea,  effect  compared  to  that  of  prairie,  64; 
giving  effect  of  sublimity,  79;  effect  of 
infinity,  136;    ref.,  369 

Seashore  planting,  165 

Season,  as  affecting  landscape  effects,  83  ;  as 
giving  distinctiveness  to  garden,  238 

Seats,  in  German  gardens,  54;  in  composition, 
125,  128;  in  garden  design,  241,  246,  262; 
in  the  large  landscape  park,  316-17 


Seavey,  Frances  Copley,  ref.,  376 

Seclusion,  effect  of  valleys,  135  ;   effect  sought 

in  the  large  landscape  park,  300-1 
Sedding,  John  D.,  ref.,  374 
Sedgwick,  Mrs.  Mabel  Cabot,  ref.,  371 
Sensation,  process,  7-8 ;  sources  of  pleasure  in. 

Sequence,  in  composition,  94-96;  of  con- 
tinuation or  repetition,  94-95  ;  intensifica- 
tion of  emotion  from,  97-98 ;  of  shapes  in 
composition,  100;  of  textures  in  composi- 
tion, 104;  in  color  composition,  no;  in 
mountain  forms,  133;  in  valleys,  134; 
between  ground  and  structure,  obtained  by 
planting,  187-88;   in  garden  design,  236-37 

Sequoia  grove,  a  landscape  character,  66-67 

Service  areas,  in  the  estate,  249,  252,  255, 
263-66 

Service  buildings,  in  the  estate,  249,  263-64; 
in  the  large  landscape  park,  314-15 

Service  courts,  263,  271 

Service  traffic,  on  the  estate,  270-72  ;  in  parks, 
309-10 

Set  back  restrictions,  in  land  subdivision,  293 

Sewage  considerations,  in  land  subdivision, 
284 

Shade,  use  in  historic  styles  of  landscape  de- 
sign, 35,  36,  41;  along  roads,  223.  See 
also  Light  and  shade 

Shadows,  in  pastoral  landscape,  70;  color  in 
distance,  1 14-15;  as  enframement,  126-27; 
making  interest  in  ground  surface,  148;  in 
interior  of  trees,  159;  in  reflections  of 
waterside  planting,  185;  of  trees  on  build- 
ings, 188;  representation  on  landscape 
plans,  350 

Shakespeare  garden,  239 

Shaler,  Nathaniel  Southgate,  quoted,  12; 
note,  92;    refs.,  367,  369 

Shape,  in  composition,  g8-ioi ;  individuality 
through,  in  landscape  composition,  99-100; 
value  of  shapes  and  their  arrangement  in 
composition,  loo-i ;  scale  relation  of  tex- 
ture to,  103-4;  illusions  of,  in  composition, 
119-20;  in  plant  materials,  151;  in  inclos- 
ing plantations,  168-69;  as  giving  individu- 
ality to  plants,  172;  in  tree  and  shrub 
groups,  175;  in  carpet  bedding,  180-82;  of 
buildings  in  relation  to  topography,  189- 
90;  of  buildings  dominating  landscape,  191; 


INDEX 


401 


of  buildings  in  relation  to  landscape,  192-94; 
harmony  of  buildings  in  groups,  194;  of 
bridges,  217-18;  as  giving  distinctiveness  to 
garden,  238 

Shardeloes,  Repton  quotation,  93 

Shelters  and  pavilions,  in  historic  styles  of 
landscape  design,  37,  38,  54,  56;  in  com- 
position, 125,  128;  hilltop,  134;  as  ele- 
ments in  landscape  design,  196-98;  on  ter- 
races, 199;  in  garden  design,  241,  242,  244, 
246;  in  design  of  the  estate,  261-62;  in  the 
large  landscape  park,  315-16 

Shopping  centers,  space  reserved  for,  in  land 
subdivisions,  290 

Shores,  as  elements  in  design,  138-40;  plant- 
ing, 185-86 

Shrubs,  trained,  in  Japanese  gardens,  55;  in 
composition,  126,  128;  forms,  153-54; 
winter  color,  bark,  and  fruit,  162;  masses 
in  flower,  164;  avoidance  of  excess  of 
variety  in  plantations,  quotation  from 
Price,  note,  164;  specimens  in  planting  de- 
sign, 171-73 ;  groups,  in  planting  design, 
173-75;  composition  of  groups,  174-75; 
shrub  beds,  175-76;  planting  in  relation  to 
topography,  183-85;  as  waterside  planting, 
185;  as  transition  between  ground  and 
structure,  187-88;  clipped,  as  increasing 
dominance  of  buildings  in  landscape,  191 ;  as 
enframing  steps,  203  ;  along  roads,  223  ;  in- 
adequate as  central  feature  in  formal  gar- 
den, 237;  as  screen  of  service  yard,  263; 
in  street  planting  strips,  285 ;  in  the  large 
landscape  park,  301-2;  in  List  of  Plants 
to  accompany  planting  plan  for  suburban 
estate  near  Boston,  Mass.,  357-59;  in  plant- 
ing design,  refs.,  369-71.  See  also  Inclos- 
ing plantations 

ShurtlefF,  Flavel,  ref.,  381 

Sidewalks,  in  land  subdivision,  285-86 

Sierras  (California),  Sequoia  grove,  66; 
mountain  meadow,  67-68 ;  illus..  Frontis- 
piece, plates  7,  8,  23,  24 

Sieveking,  Albert  Forbes,  ref.,  365 

Sight,  sense  of,  consideration  in  landscape 
design,  7;  in  perception  of  shape,  98;  in 
perception  of  texture,  103 

Signs,   guide,   in   the    large    landscape    park, 

317 
Silhouette,  of  landscape  composition  against 


twilight  sky.  Price  quotation,  note,  1 13;   of 

buildings  in  landscape,  193 
Sincerity,  in  design,  17 
Sion  House,  Brentford,  illus.,  plate  26 
Site,  choice  for  an  estate,  273-74;    for  ^  large 

landscape  park,  299-300 
Sitwell,  Sir  George,  quoted,  1 1 ;  quoted,  notes, 

15,  103;   refs.,  367,  372 
Size,  and  sublimity,  79;   in  composition,  10 1- 

3;     scale    relation    of   texture    to,    103-4; 

differentiation  of  planes  of  distance,   127; 

harmony  of  buildings  in  groups,  194 
Skating,  provision  for,  in  the  large  landscape 

park,  305 
Skating  ponds,  as  part  of  recreation  system, 

297 

Ski-jumping,  provision  for,  in  the  large  land- 
scape park,  305-6 

Sky,  as  affecting  landscape  character  of 
prairie,  64;  color,  114;  as  element  in 
landscape  composition,  129 

Smell,  sense  of,  consideration  in  landscape 
design,  7 ;    associational  appeal  to  emotion, 

14-15 

Spain,  Moorish  style  of  landscape  design  in, 
35-36;    r^-/.,  366 

Specifications  and  contracts,  344 

Specimen  trees,  in  composition,  123;  in  rela- 
tion to  inclosing  plantations,  169;  in  plant- 
ing design,  171-73;  specimen  evergreens  as 
building  decoration,  188 

Speedways,  relation  to  the  large  landscape 
park,  310 

Sports  and  games,  areas  for,  in  the  estate, 
249,  266-67;  note,  274;  in  the  large  land- 
scape park,  305-7 

Spring  foliage,  159 

"  Squares,"    as    part    of    recreation    system, 

297 

Stables,  263 

Standards  of  beauty,  not  universal,  20-21 

State  highways,  322 

State  parks  and  reservations,  321-22 

Statuary,  in  historic  styles  of  landscape  de- 
sign, 39-40,  43,  53;  in  composition,  117, 
125;  shelters  over,  197;  enframed  by  steps, 
203  ;  as  an  element  in  landscape  design, 
210-13  ;  value  among  decorative  objects  in 
design,  211-12;  setting  in  landscape  com- 
position,   212-13;     in    fountains,   215;   in 


402 


LANDSCAPE     DESIGN 


garden  design,  245-46,  260;  in  the  large 
landscape  park,  317 

Steel,  structural,  as  bridge  material,  217 

Stein,  Henri,  ref.,  365 

Stepping  stones,  225 

Steps,  in  English  Tudor  gardens,  48;  as  in- 
creasing dominance  of  buildings  in  land- 
scape, 191;  texture,  195;  in  terrace  walls 
and  banks,  199-201 ;  as  elements  in  land- 
scape design,  201-4;  •"  formal  design, 
201-3  ;  in  naturalistic  design,  203-4;  gates 
and,  210 

Stone,  imitations,  1 18-19;  texture  and  color 
of  buildings  in  relation  to  landscape,  195 ; 
in  walls,  205-6;  statuary,  212;  bridges, 
218;  stone  slabs  as  material  of  garden 
paths,  229 

Stone,  Broken,  as  material  of  roads  and  paths, 
219,  228 

Stones,  in  Japanese  gardens,  55,  56 

Stourton,  Wilts,  illus.,  plate  28 

Stowe,  46 

Streams,  illusions  of  extent,  117,  of  character, 
121;  as  elements  in  design,  140-42;  ap- 
parent importance  increased,  142-43; 
bowlders  in,  145;   in  large  landscape  parks, 

3°3-4 

Street  systems,  in  land  subdivision,  relation 
to  city  plan,  282-83  ;  characteristic  effects, 
283  ;  of  cities,  relation  to  circulatory  sys- 
tem of  the  large  landscape  park,  308 

Streets,  in  land  subdivision,  relation  to  topog- 
raphy, 283-84;  sub-surface  utilities,  284; 
street  widths,  284-85  ;  roadways  and  plant- 
ing strips,  285  ;  sidewalks,  285-86;  reserved 
triangles  at  intersections,  290.  See  also 
Roads 

Structures,  design,  in  relation  to  landscape, 
189-230;   refs.,  372-73 

Structures,  Architectural,  planting  in  rela- 
tion to,  186-88:  as  enframement,  186-87;  as 
transition  between  ground  and  structure, 
187-88;  as  decoration  of  structures,  188; 
vines  and,  ref.,  369 

Stuart,  C.  M.  Villiers,  note,  36;   ref.,  365 

Stucco,  118;  color  of  buildings  in  relation  to 
landscape,  195  ;   walls,  206 

Study  of  landscape  architecture  in  profes- 
sional schools,  4 

Stiibben,  J.,  ref.,  380 


Style,  taste  and,  22  ;  individual,  28-29;  choice 
of,  60-61 ;  border  land  of  landscape  style 
with  landscape  character,  70;  choice,  for 
garden,  239 

Style,  Architectural,  and  form  relations  of 
buildings  in  landscape,  193-94;  and  build- 
ing texture,  195 ;  house  form  as  affected 
by  choice  of,  253 

Styles  of  landscape  design,  32-61 ;  human- 
ized and  naturalistic,  30-31 ;  study  of,  59— 
60;  landscape  characters  as  parallel  to, 
63-64;    effects  in,  85-86; 

historic  styles:  origin,  29-30;  origin  and 
names,  32-33;  categories,  33-35  ;  examples, 
35-59:  Moorish  in  Spain,  35-36;  Moghul 
in  India,  36-39;  Italian  Renaissance  and 
Baroque  villas,  39-42 ;  Le  Notre,  42-45 ; 
Romantic  landscape  style,  45-47;  English 
Tudor  formal,  47-49 ;  English  cottage,  49- 
5b;  New  England  colonial,  50-51 ;  modern 
German  formal,  51-54;  Japanese,  54-57; 
modern  American  landscape  style,  57-59; 
refs.,  364-66 

Sub-surface  utilities,  note,  220;  of  streets  in 
land  subdivision,  284 

Sublime,  Price's  Essay  on  the,  ref.,  367 

Sublimity,  effect  of  Sequoia  grove,  67 ;  a 
landscape  effect,  79-81 

Sundials,  128,  195,  210;  in  garden  design, 
245-46,  262 

Sunk  panels,  244 

Sunrise  and  sunset  colors,  cause  of,  114 

Superintendence,  need  for  designing  skill  in, 
341-42;  superintendence  of  construction, 
351-53;   of  maintenance,  353 

Surface  decoration,  planting  as,  179-83 ;  of 
walls,  205-7;  roads  and  paths  as,  225-30; 
of  garden  "  floor,"  242-44 

Surprise,  effect  in  composition,  91-92 

"  Surprise "  features,  in  Italian  and  older 
German  gardens,  10 

Surveying,  339^4° 

Swaelmen,  Louis  van  der,  note,  323  ;   ref.,  380 

Swimming,  provision  for,  in  the  large  land- 
scape park,  305 

Swimming  pools,  on  the  estate,  266;  as  part 
of  recreation  system,  297 

Symbolism,  in  Moghul  gardens,  36;  in 
Japanese  styles,  55-56;  of  plants,  166-67 

"  Symmetrical  "  styles  of  landscape  design,  34 


INDEX 


403 


Symmetry,    and    balance,    97;    illusions    of, 

120 
Symonds,  J.  A.,  quoted,  note,  26-27 
Sypesteyn,  C.  H.  C.  A.  van,  rej.,  365 

Tables,  garden  furniture,  54,  262 

Tabor,  Grace,  notes,  51,  57;    ref.,  366 

Taj  Mahal,  36,  39;   illus.,  plate  I 

Takata,  Takekatzu  Uenoru,  note,  57 

Tan  bark,  as  bridle  path  material,  227 

Tar,  as  material  of  roads  and  paths,  228 

Taste,  and  style,  22;  individual  and  com- 
munity, 24-25;  development,  25-26; 
teaching  and,  26;    in  landscape  effects,  76 

Taste,  sense  of,  consideration  in  landscape 
design,  7 ;  associational  appeal  to  emotion, 
14-15 

Taylor,  Alexander  S.,  note,  293 

Tea  houses,  197 

Teaching  of  design,  26 

Telford,  as  material  of  roads  and  paths,  228 

Temples,  garden,  262 

Tennis  courts,  in  the  estate,  266,  274;  in  the 
large  landscape  park,  305-6 

Terra-cotta  walls,  206 

Terraces,  in  historic  styles  of  landscape  de- 
sign, 37,  40.  48 ;  as  increasing  dominance  of 
buildings  in  landscape,  191 ;  as  base  for 
buildings,  193;  as  elements  in  landscape 
design,  198-201 ;  terrace  banks,  200-1 ; 
and  steps,  201-3  >  relation  to  house  on 
hillside,  256;  flower-decorated,  259.  See 
also  House  terraces 

Texture,  as  modifying  shape  composition, 
loi ;  in  composition,  103-4;  scale  rela- 
tion to  size  and  shape,  103-4;  illusions  of, 
difficult,  117;  differentiation  of  planes  of 
distance,  127;  of  rocks,  146;  interest  in 
ground  surface,  148;  of  plant  materials, 
151;  in  topiary  work,  156;  in  planting 
design,  157-58;  in  inclosing  plantations, 
168-69;  of  hedges,  170;  of  edgings,  171; 
as  giving  individuality  to  plants,  172;  in 
tree  and  shrub  groups,  175;  carpet  bedding 
as,  180;  of  turf,  182;  of  vines  on  struc- 
tures, 188;  texture  harmony  of  buildings 
with  landscape,  19c;  of  buildings  dominat- 
ing landscape,  191 ;  harmony  of  buildings 
in  groups,  194;  texture  relations  of  build- 
ings and   landscape  surroundings,   194-9S ; 


of  steps  in  landscape,  204;  of  walls,  205-6; 
in  materials  of  roads  and  paths,  227-30 

Theaters,  garden,  266-67 

Theaters,  outdoor,  in  the  large  landscape 
park,  305 

Theory  of  design,  see  Design,  Landscape 
design 

Thomas,  F.  Inigo,  ref.,  373 

Thompson,  James,  45 

Thoresby  House,  Wilts,  illus.,  plate  10 

Tiles,  in  Moghul  gardens,  38;  in  pools,  216; 
as  material  of  roads  and  paths,  229 

Titles,  on  landscape  plans,  351 

Tobogganing,  provision  for,  in  the  large  land- 
scape park,  305-6 

Topiary  work,  individuality  of  shape,  99- 
100;  plant  form  in,  156-57;  in  garden 
design,  245-46 

Topographic  data  for  landscape  design,  339- 
40 

Topographic  map,  preparation,  339;  example, 
illus.,  opp.  356 

Topography,  effect  on  historic  styles  of 
landscape  design,  29;  in  English  cottage 
style,  50;  flat,  influencing  German  park 
design,  54;  consideration  in  Japanese  styles, 
56;  as  motiving  modern  American  land- 
scape style,  58 ;  planting  in  relation  to, 
183-85 ;  adaptation  of  buildings  to,  189- 
90;  relation  of  steps  to,  203  ;  bridge  forms 
in  relation  to,  218;  roads  in  relation  to, 
219-20;  paths  in  relation  to,  224-25;  caus- 
ing originality  in  garden  design,  238;  as 
affecting  location  and  orientation  of  house 
in  estate,  253-57;  streets  in  relation  to,  in 
land  subdivision,  283-84;  relation  of  park 
paths  to,  312-13 

Touch,  sense  of,  consideration  in  landscape 
design,  7;  in  perception  of  shape,  98;  in 
perception  of  texture,  103 

Tradition,  in  design,  25-26 

Traffic,  steps  and,  201-4;  gates  and,  209-10; 
and  bridges,  216;  roads  and  paths,  219- 
30;  service  and  pleasure,  in  relation  to 
house  location,  254-55;  considerations  of, 
in  design  of  estate,  269-72 ;  consideration 
in  land  subdivision,  282-86;  in  relation  to 
planting  of  the  large  landscape  park,  301- 
4;  relation  to  circulation  in  the  large  land- 
scape park,  308-14 


404 


LANDSCAPE    DESIGN 


Training,  for  professional  practice  of  land- 
scape architecture,  4-5 ;  and  attraction  of 
attention  in  landscape  composition,  91 
Trees,  Moghul  symbolism,  36;  in  Italian 
villas,  42 ;  in  style  of  Le  Notre,  44 ;  in 
Romantic  landscape  style,  46;  in  English 
Tudor  style,  48;  in  Japanese  gardens,  55; 
in  modern  American  landscape  style,  59; 
in  landscape  characters,  66,  69,  70;  giant, 
giving  effect  of  sublimity,  66-67,  79~8o; 
use  in  municipal  forests  treated  with  re- 
gard to  landscape  character,  72-73 ;  in 
landscape  composition,  99-100,  102,  123, 
125,  126;  forms,  153-54;  classes  of  forms 
and  their  uses  in  design,  154-55;  '"  ''^'s- 
tion  to  stages  of  growth,  quotation  from 
Garden  and  Forest,  note,  155;  form  the 
expression  of  mode  of  growth,  IS5~S6; 
winter  form,  156;  in  topiary  work,  156-57; 
winter  color,  bark,  and  fruit,  162;  per- 
sonification, 166;  design  of  tree  masses, 
167;  specimen  trees  in  planting  design, 
171-73;  forms  suitable  for  specimens,  172; 
tree  groups,  in  planting  design,  173-75; 
composition  of  groups,  174-75  ;  clipped  trees 
on  parterres,  181;  planting  in  relation  to 
topography,  183-85;  trees  as  enframement 
of  structures,  186-87;  clipped  trees  increas- 
ing dominance  of  buildings  in  landscape, 
191 ;  form  relation  of  trees  to  buildings  in 
landscape,  193;  in  building  groups,  194; 
enframing  steps,  203 ;  along  roads,  223 ; 
inadequate  as  central  feature  in  formal 
garden,  237;  formal  arrangement  in  gar- 
den, 245-46;  woods  on  the  estate,  268; 
planting  along  roads  in  estate,  269;  in 
street  planting  strips,  285 ;  planting  in  the 
large  landscape  park,  302-3 ;  planting 
along  park  roads,  311;  in  List  of  Plants 
to  accompany  planting  plan  for  suburban 
estate  near  Boston,  Mass.,  357-59;  in 
planting  design,  refs.,  369-71.  See  also 
Inclosing  plantations 
Trellises,  vine,  172;  lattice  fences  as,  208 
Triggs,  H.  Inigo,  note,  77;  rejs.,  366,  375,  376 
Tub  plants,  in  style  of  Le  Notre,  44;  as 
building  decoration,  188;  in  garden  de- 
sign, 245-46 
Tudor  formal  style  of  landscape  design  in 
England,  47-49 


Tundra,  a  landscape  character,  65-66 

Tunnels,  for  roads  crossing  at  separated 
grades,  222 

Turf,  in  English  Tudor  style,  48 ;  in  English 
pastoral  landscape,  70;  in  planting  design, 
182-83  >  on  terrace  banks,  200-1 ;  gutters, 
220;  paths,  225,  230;  in  garden  design, 
243-44;  areas  for  sports  and  games  on 
estate,  266;    in  landscape  parks,  301 

Turf  panels,  227,  230,  245-46 

Turnarounds,  see  Forecourts,  Roads,  Service 
courts 

Twilight,  as  bringing  out  composition  of 
landscape,  113 

Types,  defined,  21 

Types  of  landscape  designs,  231-323;  refs., 
373-81 

Tyrell,  Henry  Grattan,  note,  217;   ref.,  jyz 

Udine,  Jean  d',  note,  14 

Ugliness,  definition,  20 

Underwood,  Loring,  ref.,  373 

United  States,  early  styles  of  landscape  design 
in,  57;  estates  and  gardens,  refs.,  374-75. 
See  also  headings  beginning  with  word 
National 

Unity,  of  objects,  9;  importance  in  design, 
10;  as  completeness  of  organization,  16- 
17;  logical,  17;  ethical,  17-18;  economic, 
18;   esthetic,  19;   and  attention,  90 

University  of  California  plan,  ref.,  376 

Unwin,  Raymond,  ?iote,  289;    refs.,  379,  381 

Urns,  210;   in  garden  design,  245-46 

Valleys,  landscape  characters  of,  62-64 ;  typical 
forms,  134-35;  choice  of  viewpoint  for 
completeness  of  effect,  135-36;  location  of 
house  in,  255,  257 

Value,  color,  in  color  composition,  106-7, 
109;  in  landscape  composition,  in;  in 
representation  on  landscape  plans,  348 

Van  Pelt,  J.  V.,  note,  116 

Van  Rensselaer,  M.  G.  (Mrs.  Schuyler),  refs., 
362,364,366,373 

Variety,  in  composition,  94;  excess  in  plant- 
ing to  be  avoided,  160;  quotation  from 
Price,  note,  164 

Vases,  181,  210;  in  garden  design,  245-46; 
261 

Vaux,  Calvert,  S7,  S8 


INDEX 


405 


Vaux-le-Vicomte,   42,   44 

Vegetable  gardens,  51  ;   in  the  estate,  265-66 

Vegetation,  effect  on  historic  styles  of  land- 
scape design,  29;  as  motiving  Italian 
styles,  42  ;  importance  in  modern  American 
landscape  style,  58-59;  as  basis  of  land- 
scape character,  65,  66,  68-69,  7°;  element 
in  landscape  design,  151-88;  refs.,  369-71. 
See  also  Plants 

Verbal  directions  and  explanations,  of  land- 
scape design,  345 

Versailles,  129,  192,  199;  as  example  of  style 
of  Le  Notre,  42-44 ;  sequence  of  landscape 
effects  in  Chateau,  Grand  Trianon,  Petit 
Trianon,  and  Hameau,  85-86;  illus.,  opp. : 
44,  78,  80,  82,  84,  196 

Viewpoints,  developed  in  design  of  Japanese 
gardens,  56;  for  composition  dominated  by 
mountain,  133;  on  hill,  treatment,  134; 
choice  of,  for  completeness  of  effect  of 
valley,  135-36;  land  for,  turned  over  to 
city  in  subdivision  scheme,  291  ;  as  part  of 
recreation  system,  297 

Views,  treatment,  in  historic  styles  of  land- 
scape design,  39,  42,  55,  56;  from  bridges, 
enframement  by  planting,  187;  dominated 
by  buildings,  192;  gazebos  dominating, 
197;  from  terraces,  198-200;  from  top  of 
steps,  203  ;  bounded  by  walls  or  fences, 
204;  of  and  from  bridges,  217;  conceal- 
ment of  road  crossing  view,  219;  of  and 
from  roads,  222-23  ;  from  garden,  consid- 
ered in  its  design,  234-35,  241;  as  affect- 
ing location  and  orientation  of  house  in 
estate,  253-57 ;  development  of  open  view 
in  design  of  estate,  267,  not  to  be  inter- 
rupted by  roads,  269-70;  from  and  into  the 
large  landscape  park,  300-2 

Village  improvement,  ref.,  381 

Villas,  Italian,  see  Italian  villas 

Vinci,  Leonardo  da,  quoted,  note,  114 

Vines,  on  lattices,  as  inclosure,  170;  on  free- 
standing trellises,  172;  as  building  decora- 
tion, 188;  subordinating  structures  to 
landscape,  190,  198;  on  walls,  206;  on 
fences,  208;   rej.,  369 

Vistas,  treatment,  in  historic  styles  of  land- 
scape design,  40,  43,  44;  object  terminat- 
ing, made  sufficient  by  being  in  strong 
light,  112;    as  a  typical  example  of  a  pic- 


torial composition,  124-25;  gates  as  ter- 
mination of,  209;  in  garden  design,  241, 
245-46;  in  land  subdivision  design,  283, 
290 
Visual  angle,  a  consideration  in  landscape 
composition,  92 

Wading  pools,  as  part  of  recreation  system, 

297 

Walks,  see  Paths 

Wall  fountains,  213-14;  in  garden  design, 
241,  246 

Wall  gardens,  238;  ref.,  370 

Wall  planting,  143,  170,  206-7 

Walls,  English  Tudor,  48;  in  composition, 
128;  illusions  of  material,  118;  as  man- 
made  rock  arrangement,  143  ;  texture,  195; 
pavilions  as  part  of,  197;  as  elements  in 
landscape  design,  204-7;  materials  and 
decoration,  205-7;  gates  in,  209-10;  in 
garden  design,  240,  241,  242;  of  forecourts, 
258;  as  screen  of  service  yard,  263  ;  restric- 
tions in  land  subdivision,  292-93  ;  as  park 
boundary,  318 

Walls,  Retaining,  of  terraces,  198,  199;  as 
elements  in  landscape  design,  200;  steps 
in,  202-3  ;  as  part  of  garden  boundary,  235, 
240-41 

Water,  use  in  historic  styles  of  landscape 
design,  36,  38,  39,  41,  55;  natural  forms  as 
elements  in  design,  130-50,  refs.,  369; 
architectural  and  sculptural  water  features, 
213-16,  ref.,  372 

Water  bodies,  their  effects,  136-37;  lakes, 
137-38;  shores  and  beaches,  138-40; 
streams  and  stream  banks,  140-42;  water- 
falls, 142-43 

Water  fowl,  on  park  ponds,  304 

Water  gardens,  ref.,  370 

Water  planting,  in  pools,  216 

Water-ramps,  41,  214-15 

Water-supply  reservations,  municipal,  321 ; 
combination  with  municipal  forests,  72-73 

Waterfalls,  in  Japanese  gardens,  55  ;  different 
effects,  84;  as  elements  in  landscape  design, 

142-43 
Waterside  planting,  166,  185-86;  in  landscape 

parks,  303-4 
Waugh,  Frank  A.,  ref.,  381 
Weather,  as  affecting  landscape  effects,  83 


4o6 


LANDSCAPE     DESIGN 


Weaver,  Lawrence,  notes,  49,  210;   refs.,  372, 

373 

Weed,  Howard  Evarts,  re/.,  377 

Whately,  Thomas,  note,  47;  refs.,  64,  371 

Wheelwright,  Robert,  note,  308;    ref.,  362 

Wilhelmshohe,  47,  79,  215 

Wind,  as  affecting  landscape  character,  64, 
65,  66;   on  water  surfaces,  137 

Windbreaks,  170 

Window-boxes,  as  building  decoration,  188 

Winter  effects,  tree  form,  156;  color  of  trees 
and  shrubs,  162;  of  plantations,  184;  of 
garden  visible  from  house,  260 

Wires  and  poles,  considerations  in  land  sub- 
division, 284 

ff^oche.  Die,  ref.,  375 


Wooden  bridges,  218 

Woods,  note,  155;  planting  design,  167;  in 
the  estate,  249,  268;  in  the  large  landscape 
park,  300-3  ;  roads  and  paths  through, 
311-14 

Works  of  art,  basis  of  permanent  appeal,  15 

Writing,   as  means  of  professional  publicity, 

3-9 
Written  statements,  in  representation  of  land- 
scape designs,  343-44 

Yeomans,  Alfred  B.,  ref.,  379 
Yosemite,  321;    illus.,  plates  12,  13,  14 

Zoological  parks  and  gardens,  233;  relation 
to  the  large  landscape  park,  305-6,  307-8, 
315;  '■</■-.  376 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America. 


PLATES 


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Plate  13 


Photograph  by  H.   I'.  Hubbard 


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Photograph   by   H.    V.   Hubbard 


NEVADA    FALL,    YOSEMITE 


Flate  13 


Photograph   by    George   R.    King 

THE  MEADOW  ROAD,  ARXOLD  ARBORETUM 


Plate  i6 


Photograph   by   H.    I'.   Hubbard 


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Pliotogr. 


THE   TOWN    OF    BALTIT,    HUXZA 

A    STUDY   OF   ADAPTATION-    OF    STRfCTLRES    TO   TOPOGRAPHY 


"IPHE   following   pages  contain  advertisements  of  a 
few  of  the  Macniillan  books  on  kindred  subjects. 


Historic  Silver  of  the  Colonies  and  Its  Makers 


By  FRANCIS  HILL  BIGELOW 

With  many  illustrations 


Cloth,  tzmo 


This  volume  describes  and  illustrates  the  various  forms  of  the  colonial 
silver  of  the  seventeenth  and  eighteenth  centuries,  principally  made  by 
the  colonial  silversmiths.  Many  of  these  vessels,  which  are  "  little  monu- 
ments of  American  history,"  bear  the  names  or  initials  of  men  famous  as 
governors  and  soldiers,  Puritan  leaders  and  prosperous  merchants,  leading 
citizens  and  eminent  divines.  Biographical  and  historical  notes  regard- 
ing the  owners  and  silversmiths  are  included.  To  Mr.  Bigelow's  interests 
in  the  subject  of  American  silver  were  due  the  exhibitions  held  at  the 
Museum  of  Fine  Arts  at  Boston  in  1906  and  191 1,  the  installation  of  the 
exhibition  at  Jamestown  in  1907  of  the  collection  formed  by  the  Massa- 
chusetts Society  of  Colonial  Dames  and  the  publication  of  Mr.  E.  Alfred 
Jones's  "  The  Old  Silver  of  American  Churches,"  which  was  undertaken 
at  his  suggestion  by  the  National  Society  of  Colonial  Dames  of  America. 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


Turf  for  Golf  Courses 


By  CHARLES  V.   PIPER 

Agrostologist,  United  States  Department  of  Agriculture 
AND 

RUSSELL  A.  OAKLEY 

Agronomist,  United  States  Department  of  Agriculture 

Profusely  illustrated,  cloth,  8vo,  $2.J0 

A  very  important  treatise  which  will  help  to  fill  the  demand  for  more  knowledge  in  the  art  of 
growing  grass  turf.  The  authors  deal  with  the  subject  from  the  point  of  view  of  the  golf  course 
rather  than  from  the  comparatively  simple  one  of  lawn  and  greensward. 

If  what  is  known  of  fine  turf  culture  is  utilized  intelligently,  much  needless  waste  of  effort  and 
money  may  be  avoided.  Professors  Piper  and  Oakley  present  in  simple  form  a  comprehensive 
survey  of  present  knowledge  in  this  field,  with  many  helpful  suggestions  as  to  upkeep,  selection  of 
seed,  extermination  of  animal  and  weed  pests,  etc. 

TABLE   OF   CONTENTS 

I.  General  View. 

II.  Soils  for  Turf  Grasses. 

III.  Fertilizers. 

IV.  Manures,  Composts,  and  Other  Humous  Materials. 
V.  Lime  and  Its  Use. 

VI.    The  Important  Turf  Plants. 
VII.    How  to  Distinguish  Different  Kinds  of  Turf. 
VIII.    The  Turf  Grasses  for  Different  Purposes. 
IX.    Making  the  Turf. 
X.    Subsequent  Care. 
XI.    Weeds  and  Their  Control. 
XII.    Animal  Pests. 

XIII.  Turf  Machinery. 

XIV.  Experimental  Work  on  Golf  Courses. 

XV.    Personal  Experiences.     (Under  various  climatic  conditions  in  various  soils.) 

"  It  is  the  best  book  on  grasses  and  turf  ever  published.  Written  by  Mr.  Piper,  the  Govern- 
ment agrostologist,  who,  in  other  words,  is  an  authority  on  grasses,  and  by  Mr.  Oakley,  the  Govern- 
ment agronomist,  who  is  an  authority  on  the  care  of  land,  the  book  is  the  last  word  on  grass  and 
soil."  —  Philadelphia  Public  Ledger. 

'■  Green-keepers  throughout  the  country  will  find  this  book  invaluable."  —  JV.  Y.  Evening  Post. 

"An  authoritative  and  practical  treatise  on  the  growing  and  maintenance  of  grass  turf.  Almost 
every  possible  phase  of  the  subject  is  dealt  with,  soils,  fertilizers,  drainage,  sodding  methods,  special 
seeds  for  different  localities,  and  control  of  pests.  '  Turf  for  Golf  Courses '  should  be  an  indispensa- 
ble volume  in  every  country  club."  —  Argonaut. 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


The  Standard  Cyclopedia  of  Horticulture 

Edited  by   L.   H.   BAILEY 

WITH   THE   ASSISTANCE    OF  OVER  joo    COLLABORATORS 

New  edition,  entirely  rewritten  and  enlarged,  with  many  new  features ;  with  24  plates 

in  color,  96  full-page  half  tones,  and  over  4000  text  illustrations. 

Complete  in  six  volumes.     Sold  only  in  sets 

Set,  cloth,  $36.00;  leather,  $60.00 


"  The  Standard  Cyclopedia  of  Horticulture,"  pronounced  by  experts  to  be  an 
absolute  necessity  for  every  horticulturist  and  of  tremendous  value  to  every  type 
of  gardener,  professional  and  amateur,  is  at  last  completed.  "  An  indispensable 
work  of  reference  to  every  one  interested  in  the  land  and  its  products,  whether 
commercially  or  professionally,  as  a  student  or  an  amateur,"  is  the  Boston 
Transcript's  characterization  of  it,  while  Horticulttire  adds  that  "it  is  very  live 
literature  for  any  one  engaged  in  any  department  of  the  horticultural  field." 

"  This  really  monumental  performance  will  take  rank  as  a  standard  in  its  class. 
Illustrations  and  text  are  admirable.  .  .  .  Our  own  conviction  is  that  while  the 
future  may  bring  forth  amplified  editions  of  the  work,  it  will  probably  never  be 
superseded.  Recognizing  its  importance,  the  publishers  have  given  it  faultless 
form.  The  typography  leaves  nothing  to  be  desired,  the  paper  is  calculated  to 
stand  wear  and  tear,  and  the  work  is  at  once  handsomely  and  attractively  bound." 

—  New  York  Daily  Tribune. 


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Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


My  Growing  Garden 


By  J.   HORACE  MacFARLAND 

Author  of  "  Getting  Acquainted  with  Trees  " 

Color  illuslratiens,  $2.sj 


A  book  filled  with  suggestions  and  practical  advice.  The  history  follows 
through  the  cycle  of  the  year,  devoting  a  chapter  to  each  month's  changes  in  the 
growing  garden.     Remarkable  photographic  illustrations  by  the  author. 

"  One  of  the  most  dehghtful  garden  books  of  the  year  .  .  .  altogether  unique. 
The  garden  is  truly  a  home  garden,  an  intimate  part  of  the  author's  life." 

—  Countryside  Maga.zine. 

"  The  book  is  well  printed.  The  many  pictures,  some  of  them  finely  colored, 
are  of  unusual  quality.  The  book  smells  of  the  garden.  A  record  of  unflagging 
enthusiasm  and  successes  and  failures.  Admirably  written,  good  to  read  aloud, 
and  brimming  over  with  love  of  flowers  and  vegetables  and  trees.  It  carries  the 
feeling  of  being  written  by  a  man  rather  than  a  woman,  and  yet  a  man  who  has 
all  a  woman's  sensitiveness  to  beauty.  For  suggestiveness  and  the  inspiration  of 
joy  in  the  garden  this  book  cannot  be  surpassed  in  the  long  list  of  garden  books. 
It  has  the  unusual  merit  of  a  very  full  index.  The  author  knows  what  the  garden 
supplies  that  is  good  for  the  table,  as  well  as  the  wealth  of  flowers  it  affords." 

—  T/ie  Indepaident. 

"  The  pleasures  of  amateur  horticulture  have  seldom  been  so  alluringly  depicted 
as  by  Mr.  J.  Horace  MacFarland  in  this  chatty  and  famiUar  record  of  his  own 
experience  on  a  modest  urban,  or  perhaps  we  should  say  suburban,  estate  at 
Harrisburg,  Pa.  It  is  a  natural  growth,  this  book  of  his,  rather  than  a  product  of 
cold  calculation.  '  I  have  written  it,'  he  says,  '  but  my  family  have  lived  it  with 
me,  and  the  print-shop  which  bears  my  name  and  enjoys  my  garden  has  made  of 
the  book  much  more  than  a  perfunctory  item  of  work.  The  pubHshers,  too,  have 
let  down  the  bars,  so  that  in  a  very  special  sense  the  book  has  been  lived,  written, 
designed,  illustrated,  printed,  and  bound  as  the  work  of  one  man  and  those  about 
him.'  "  —  T/ie  Dial. 


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Old  Time  Gardens 


By  ALICE  MORSE  EARLE 

Author  of  "  Child  Life  in  Colonial  Days,"  "  Home  Life  in  Colonial  Days,"  and 
"  Stage  Coach  and  Tavern  Days  " 

New  Edition,  Illustrated,  t2mo,  $2.^0 


The  new  and  attractively  prepared  edition  of  Alice  Morse  Earle's  Old  Time 
Gardens,  a  volume  which  enjoyed  great  popularity  some  years  ago,  but  which  has 
been  recently  out  of  print,  will  be  welcomed  by  all  lovers  of  literature  and  of  flowers. 
In  a  book  of  nearly  five  hundred  pages,  profusely  illustrated  with  reproductions 
of  photographs,  the  author  deals  with  such  subjects  as  Colonial  Garden  Making, 
Front  Door-Yards,  Box  Edgings,  The  Herb  Garden,  In  Lilac  Tide,  Old  Flower 
Favorites,  Gardens  of  the  Poets,  Childhood  in  a  Garden,  Garden  Furnishings, 
Flowers  of  Mystery  and  Roses  of  Yesterday.  The  illustrations  alone  are  a  delight. 
They  show  famous  old  gardens,  beautiful  examples  of  flowers  that  have  been 
popular  and  of  which  now  little  is  heard,  and  queer  old-time  garden  prints  of  sun 
dials,  garden  walks  and  garden  furnishings. 

"No  more  suggestive  book  on  gardening  can  be  found."  —  Independent. 

"  It  is  a  delight  from  cover  to  cover  and  is  just  the  kind  of  a  garden  book  that 
every  flower  lover  and  garden  maker  likes  to  ponder  upon  and  have  close  at  hand." 

—  Tke  Craftsman. 

"  There  may  be  more  books  about  English  gardens  than  about  American,  but 
there  is  no  more  charming  flower  chat  to  be  found  anywhere  than  in  this  leisurely 
essay.  Full  of  quaint  lore,  illustrated  by  delightful  pictures  of  ancient  gardens, 
here  is  a  book  to  read  through  and  then  to  keep  within  reach." 

—  Countryiside  Magazine. 

"  Of  the  many  attractive  garden  books  on  the  market,  this,  by  reason  of  its 
excellence,  must  have  a  place  in  the  first  rank.  .  .  .  The  book  is  'crammed  full 
of  poetic  garden  stuff.'      It  is  a  fluent  tale,  yet  as  practical  as  it  is  romantic." 

—  Chicago  Evening  Post. 


THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

Publishers  64-66  Fifth  Avenue  New  York 


JIVER9ITV  OF  ILUNOI9-URBANA 


3  0112  051869623 


